We as South Americans? : Measuring Entitativity of and Identification with a Transnational Imagined Community in a Brazilian Sample

Abstract

Aim: The aim of the study was to investigate, from a social-psychological and constructivist perspective, how much the relatively sparse research into South American collective identities could potentially benefit from literature, models, and previous experiments on European transnational identity, by developing different measures and then using these to gauge the psychological existence of and identification with South America as a transnational imagined community in a Brazilian sample. Method: A questionnaire was completed by 96 female and 74 male Brazilian citizens, and one who identified as “other”. The mean age was 40.7 years (SD 15.2) for females, and 38.4 years (SD 16.1) for males. The age range was between and 16 and 93 years of age. Results: The results showed that identification with one’s own country was significantly stronger than identification with Latin America, with the world as a whole, and with South America. Of the respondents, 55 reported explicitly negative feelings when thinking of South America, while 32 reported explicitly positive feelings. Meanwhile, 65 held negative prospects for the future of South American integration, while 45 of the respondents viewed this future in a positive manner. Conclusions: It was found that most of the proposed measures adapted from previous research were reliable and significantly correlated to one another. Some of the trends observed in previous European identity research were not observable in a South American context in the Brazilian sample of the current study. This study also suggests the context-invoked model to be relevant for investigating multiple identities within individuals, and for future research into South American transnational identities.