Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper uses evidence derived from participant observation of high school basketball games in Indiana to draw theoretical conclusions about the relationship between emotional energy and symbol use in the development and maintenance of collective identity. Drawing on theories of collective effervescence, symbolic interaction, and the cognitive relationship between emotion and time, it finds that high school sports provide a point of intense collective focus on both the spatial and temporal dimensions. This collective focus generates a feeling of solidarity which invests symbols both directly and tangentially related to the on-court action with emotional energy that can be drawn upon by members of the community which those symbols represent. The in-game action and the repetition of games throughout the season and seasons through the years all constitute rhythms by which the generation of emotional energy becomes self-sustaining, provided the community in which it occurs has the necessary degree of pre-existing fusion.