ABSTRACT
The concrete network which joins Catholic women religious became evident from their initial recruitment. To have contact with one woman was to have potential access to all the women in her congregation, including those living a thousand miles away. The network to which Catholic nuns belong could be explained in terms of institutional arrangements. In the historical period when the vast majority of American nuns were teachers, profession of vows most often meant joining the teaching profession. Nuns lived together with their colleagues. Their own education and welfare were coordinated by the congregation-at-large, within the confines of a Catholic universe. Thus, personal, work, and social relations were articulated to an extraordinary degree on a structural level. This chapter provides examples in which the individual's identity is created by and creates a group identity. When tensions between an individual and the religious congregation do appear, they are often concerned with the individual's work identity.
