CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Jusic, Asim |
|---|---|
| Title | Legal Regulation of Non-Mainstream Religious Groups: Perspectives from Economics and Social Psychology |
| Summary | In this paper, preliminary theory of the behavior of religious groups is advanced, arguing that basically religious groups fulfill three basic aims: First, the provision of group identity ‚bundled‘ with shared emotions, beliefs and behavioral patterns; second, activities that are meant to sustain mutual cooperation and advance the internal and external credibility of group held religious beliefs, identity and behavioral patterns; and finally, „boundary keeping activities,“ meaning activities related to the preservation of intra-group solidarity and group existence in the face of external or internal pressures. Relying on a tradition which claims that law is a tool of social control and regulation I describe the rise of legal institutions as mechanisms to solve the problems of uncertainty. Institutions, built as they are against particular social background of values, customs, religion and informal rules, are charged with making binary decisions on what is legal or illegal. In so doing, legal institutions are influenced by social norms which have a psychological impact on legal decision makers (legislators, jurors and judges). In turn, institutions and legal decisions influence social norms themselves. The work takes as its starting point a sociological claim that legal systems for regulating religious groups judge all non-mainstream religious groups by assessing them according to their relative status, in a Weberian sense of the word, in the social strata of a given society. I extend this thesis by claiming that the status of a given religious group depends on its social distance from what is socially constructed as the mainstream and a potential for disloyalty to the state-backed mainstream norms expressed trough law. The main claim of this work is that legal judgment of non-mainstream religious groups is based on judgment of the three major functions of religious groups posited in the theory of religious groups developed. It is assumed, hence, that the legal judgment of “disloyalty” potential and social distance (that is, ‘status judgment’) is the perception of boundary sustaining, group cooperation and credibility-enhancing mechanisms, which serve as proxies for assessing the (un)acceptability of emotions, beliefs and identities that precede them, when compared against the reference point of law backed mainstream norms. Analytically, judgments of social distance and disloyalty are in practice intertwined, but can be distinguished, since the judgment of ‘disloyalty’ is normatively stronger, and usually has more immediate practical implications depending on whether the disloyalty is considered to be of such level that it creates (or is perceived as creating) present or future social harm and danger. It is expected that the judgment of disloyalty of a non-mainstream religious group is directly proportional to its non-recognition and a punitive treatment within the legal and social system. Social distance, on the other hand, is relatively frequent in cases involving new or non-mainstream religious groups, given their ‘deviance from normalcy’. The judgment of ‘social distance’ itself, however, need not imply denials of legal status and rights, especially in cases of small, socially secluded religious groups given they are able to fully internalize the costs of their functions, without imposing any costs on the rest of the society; or in cases of non-mainstream religious groups who have moved, on some scale, closer to mainstream. In other words, the further a group is from what is legally perceived as mainstream on the scale of social distance and the more secluded it is without creating perceived social harm and being judged as disloyal, the more likely it is to succeed with its legal claim. Non-mainstream religious groups that move into the mid-range of social distance receive mixed treatment, depending on whether the legal claims they make encroach on ‘mainstream values’ (in which case they fail); or whether their claim is ‘internalized’, that is it concern predominantly the group itself (in which case they are more likely to succeed.) The theory developed is than applied to three cases, the US, Germany and France. In these three chapters, a historical – institutional analysis of the development of the legal treatment of non-mainstream religions is undertaken in order to explain historical developments using concepts developed in chapter One. In Chapter Two, which deals with the case of non-mainstream religions in the US, the argument I advance is that the American society and law have gone through a slow process of an increase of social and legal toleration of non-mainstream religious groups – from fighting Mormons in 19th century towards legal and to a certain extent also social approval of a religiously inspired behavior of socially distant smaller and secluded religious communities (the toleration of petty claims). Chapter Three is devoted to the analysis of the German “cooperationist” system of regulating religious groups, and the argument advanced there is that the demand for non-mainstream group loyalty is one of the cornerstones behind legal regulatory system. The mainstream norms behind the legal system have not yet produced any strongly felt need to develop mechanisms for strategic change. There were no reasons yet, external or internal, to engage in games of strategic shifts and “acceptance” in a way I elaborated in the chapter on US. In fact, things are likely opposite and can be well combined with the loyalty-Christian culture-protectionism demands posed by the German mainstream. To the extent that homogeneity is or will be reduced in future, it should be rather clear that temptations to play strategic shifts and “acceptance” game will be stronger, while the loyalist-Christine culture-protectionism arguments will gain even more stronghold in order to set boundaries firmly. The analysis of French laicite and treatment of non-mainstream religions in France is undertaken in Chapter Four. The analysis shows that one of the potent forces behind the treatment of non-mainstream religious groups in France is an attempt to forge social unity and resolve the problem of 'groups within groups' or 'nations within nation,' an idea which has been ingrained in the project of the French Republicanism, secularism and anticlericalism from the beggining. |
| Supervisor | Sajo, Andras |
| Department | Legal Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/jusic_asim.pdf |
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