Group membership can be sustained through embodied co-presence without conversation

Evidence

Why was there so little publicly minded conversation in this context? The short answer is that there was very little conversation of any kind there. Remarkably, considering how often, and how far, participants would drive to congregate there, conversation itself was extremely rare. Music and dancing, raffles and grab-bag drawings, contests and fashion shows and other spectacles made it possible to sit for long periods of time literally without speaking. None of these centralized objects of attention was loud enough or distracting enough to prevent conversation, if participants had wanted to talk, but country-westerners just usually preferred silence. And even when there was no music or show, I often found myself sitting in silence with other silent country-westerners, when several of us were riding in the back of a pick-up on the way to a theme park, or sitting in a car, or eating at a spaghetti feed. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 685

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Deep Listening material on silence as positive social presence and shared co-presence. — connects to: Check-writing membership without member contact creates no social capital — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 160; Co-presence does not require awareness of the other’s presence; Group membership hinges on self-categorization, not interaction frequency or shared goals — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2714 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Group membership hinges on self-categorization, not interaction frequency or shared goals #corroborates (0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2714
• Co-presence does not require awareness of the other’s presence #expands (0.80)
• Collective ways of life depend on embodied practice, not just recognition of group identity. #corroborates (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 868
• Shared physical co-presence enables the cognitive harmonizations that build subjectivity #expands (0.75) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 72
• Perceived group unity arises from proximity, similarity, and interdependence cues #corroborates (0.75) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1377