Chapters authored
Losing One’s Culture: The Narrative Identity of Nigerian Catholic Religious Sisters
This chapter reports on part of the findings of a doctoral research focused on identity construction of Catholic religious sisters in the Church and in the wider Nigerian society. Primarily, the chapter interrogates how Catholic religious sisters negotiate their culture identity within the context of living religious life. Data were collected from 18 sister participants, who were purposefully recruited from two religious congregations across the different states of Nigeria. These included six temporary professed, six final professed and six leaders (including superiors/formators) representing the different categories of sisters that live religious life. The data were thematically analysed using the Dialogical Self Theory I-positions. The second sentence revealed tendencies for the participants to lose their cultural identity in terms of their struggles and sometimes compromises in identifying Western culture as the dominate culture of religious life. In this regard, the participants reported that their Nigerian communitarian culture of love, care and hospitality is regulated to the background. In response, this chapter calls for further research towards exploring the impact of culture on Catholic religious sisters’ expression of identity.
Part of the book: Culture and Identity