Description:
The authors of this article explore the relationship between the age reference group of undergraduate students at Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes and religiosity as an open system of beliefs opposed to institutional religion expressed as a form of the diurnal symbolic regime in the sense provided by Gilbert Durand. The article begins with the theory of reference groups, the anthropology of imagination and sociology, and the anthropology of religion to form a theoretical model that gives meaning to the data compiled through the sample quantitative survey, the qualitative interview by intentional sampling of maximum variety and self-ethnographies, and the information gathering conducted at various points in a research project on undergraduate students. It also addresses the impact of reference groups on their academic performance, looking at religion as a key aspect of symbolic capital and behavior modeling. The results show the construction of a symbolic regime that is called nocturnal in the anthropology of imagination, with age group roots that are open, tolerant and inclusive in nature. Said roots are reactive to all manner of exclusion, discrimination and repression, which gives rise to a range of expressive forms including religiosity as conceived in Ferrarotti’s sociology of religion (1993).