tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/max-weber-7163/articlesMax Weber – The Conversation2024-01-30T19:10:03Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2202212024-01-30T19:10:03Z2024-01-30T19:10:03ZAt a time of defensive wars of aggression, what constitutes ethical violence?<p>As the title suggests, <a href="https://www.transcript-publishing.com/author/bordoni-carlo-320001319/">Carlo Bordini’s</a> <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Ethical+Violence-p-9781509561032">Ethical Violence</a> studies the ways different forms of violence – especially but not only, war – come to be accepted as morally legitimate. </p>
<p>The book builds on the Italian sociologist and journalist’s <a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/carlo-bordoni/1772601/">prior work</a> examining social forces and changes unfolding in modern times.</p>
<p>For Bordoni, “ethical violence” is violence that, though dangerous, has become legitimised and accepted by a community as permissible or even necessary. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Ethical Violence – Carlo Boldini (Polity)</em></p>
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<p>Bordoni explores the horrors of Nazi Germany and considers the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While the book does not touch on the current conflagrations in the Middle East, these provide all-too-clear examples of brutality that is accepted and even celebrated by different sides.</p>
<p>It is a basic moral tenet and enduring concept in ethics that life is sacred and worthy of respect. So how might the known, intentional killing of thousands of human beings, such as in a war, be morally accepted? Or even seen as rational?</p>
<p>Bordoni surveys a myriad of hypotheses, traversing sociology, philosophy, political theory, history, legal theory and the social sciences. He brings into discussion thinkers as diverse as <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-nietzsche-nihilism-and-reasons-to-be-cheerful-130378">Friedrich Nietzsche</a>, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/">Max Weber</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-foucault-99758">Michel Foucault</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt">Carl Schmitt</a>, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/">Hannah Arendt</a>, <a href="https://stevenpinker.com/">Steven Pinker</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zygmunt-Bauman">Zygmunt Bauman</a>.</p>
<p>The German sociologist Weber, for instance, viewed war as a beneficial catalyst for change. German philosopher <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georg-Simmel">Georg Simmel</a> speculated on war’s capacity to create valuable internal cohesion among nation states. </p>
<p>Sifting through various views, Bordoni reflects that even in a single case there may be multiple answers. Leaders may have rational reasons (moral or self-interested) for going to war. Yet solidarity, heightened emotion and even irrationality might also be required to ignite the popular will to wage war, with all its sacrifices and brutalities.</p>
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<h2>Self defence</h2>
<p>The late 20th century saw the fitful development of the view that wars must not be fought for a state’s general political or economic interests, but only in self-defence. As Bordoni observes, this shut the front door to war only to allow it in through the back. Today, he writes, “we only have defensive wars”.</p>
<p>The current conflagrations in the Middle East support Bordoni’s insight. Israel and Hamas, the United States and Yemen, Iran and Pakistan: all these very different conflicts are, in the eyes of those fighting them, defensive wars. Each side sees itself as justifiably responding to a past or present attack. </p>
<p>Even Russia dubiously justified its invasion of Ukraine by claiming it was <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230127-putin-blasts-neo-nazis-in-ukraine-on-holocaust-remembrance-day">defending citizens against “Nazis”</a>, describing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-expansion-war-russia-ukraine">NATO’s expansion</a> as “a serious provocation”.</p>
<p>Bordoni’s work helps us understand the many reasons why societies might adopt a war footing. It is less useful, though, in trying to think through the ethics of these conflicts, if by ethics we mean what we <em>should</em> do.</p>
<p>Bordoni suggests that if we truly acknowledged the ethical value of all human life (including that of our enemies), war would not be possible.</p>
<p>He draws on Judith Butler’s idea of “<a href="https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/2339-judith-butler-precariousness-and-grievability">grievability</a>”, where communities determine whose deaths are appropriately mourned. Some lives will not be seen as valued and their deaths not worthy of grieving. If all lives were recognised as grievable, Bordoni argues, it would be impossible to accept war’s human costs. </p>
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<p>But Bordoni’s argument here seems flawed on two important counts.</p>
<p>First, it is not necessary to dehumanise someone to decide they must be killed. It is entirely possible to cleave to a moral principle – such as everyone’s right to life – and at the same time to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25482401">neutralise</a> the principle’s applicability in the present case. </p>
<p>This can be done in selective and hypocritical ways. Our ingenious human brains can confect reasons why this case is an exception to a rule we otherwise righteously acknowledge. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presents a plausible example. Russia never claimed state sovereignty was meaningless or Ukrainian citizens deserve to be slaughtered. Instead, its claims about Nazis and NATO sought to show the Ukrainian context created an exception to the widely accepted prohibition on military aggression.</p>
<p>Second, there is one case where that “exception” does seem justified, namely, in genuine cases of self-defence. Most contemporary ethical thought – in particular “<a href="https://iep.utm.edu/justwar/">just war theory</a>” – allows the use of war, and even collateral damage, in self defence against aggressors.</p>
<p>This is an important point: “ethical violence” is not merely a sociological process of building popular legitimacy for mass violence (Bordoni’s focus). It is also the demand to temper our violence until it can pass ethical muster. This involves providing strictures on when actions like war are permissible (the “<a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/document/what-are-jus-ad-bellum-and-jus-bello-0%EF%BB%BF">jus ad bellum</a>” of just war theory). It also requires respecting laws like the Geneva Conventions and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-made-its-genocide-case-against-israel-in-court-heres-what-both-sides-said-and-what-happens-next-221017">Genocide Convention</a>, that protect civilians during war (the “<a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law/ihl-other-legal-regmies/jus-in-bello-jus-ad-bellum#:%7E:text=International%20humanitarian%20law%2C%20or%20jus,Read%20more">jus in bello</a>”).</p>
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<p>Still, a counter argument here is that, while genuine claims of self-defence are pivotal in ethical decisions to visit violence on others, it may be that the social and psychological weight of actually inflicting the brutal violence demanded by war requires a dehumanised and hated foe. </p>
<p>If this is the case, even the most justified war carries a profound moral risk. We must demean the enemy, seeing human beings as obstacles requiring elimination, rather than intrinsic sources of value.</p>
<h2>Modernity and mass violence</h2>
<p>How is it that modernity – since the Enlightenment – has not consigned war and terrorism to the barbaric past? Bordoni develops a complex picture of modernity – or rather <em>modernities</em>, following Israeli sociologist <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Multiple-Modernities/Eisenstadt/p/book/9780765809261">Shmuel Eisenstadt</a> in seeing a series of sociological and economic upheavals over recent centuries. These included the creation of state sovereignty, the rise of reason and science, industrialisation and the proliferation of technology. </p>
<p>To these we must add the crises of modernity in recent decades, with its values of progress, human equality and rationality being questioned. </p>
<p>Bordoni sees our current times as characterised by a push back against rationality and science, with the embrace of emotions (including resentment). We take rationality for granted, he warns, but in truth it is a cultural achievement – a “precious plant”.</p>
<p>Even so, Bordoni cautions against the comfortable view the excesses of 20th century violence were departures from modernity. For modernity promises an orderly, standardised world, governed and controlled by precise rules to achieve conformity, security, safety and prosperity. This demand for control and perfection characterises the totalitarian impulse. Totalitarianism inevitably produces enormous violence. </p>
<p>Bordoni’s book is intellectually refreshing in its willingness to marshal many different ideas and to resist definitively choosing one theory or approach over another. But this very feature can make Ethical Violence a challenging and at times frustrating read. The book doesn’t have a central driving thesis or overarching argument the author systematically pursues. Many ideas are raised, briefly discussed, then left aside.</p>
<p>Bordoni’s sociological and historical approach helps the reader stand back from the headlines to consider the modern world’s large-scale structures and disruptions.</p>
<p>He gathers disparate threads together meaningfully, allowing us to recognise key changes and see our present moment anew: a time when, he suggests, technology is trusted but science is not and emotion and individuality have superseded rationality and competence.</p>
<p>Yet there are worries with this broad-brush approach. A focus on the differences across generations and centuries can obscure the continuities. It can also simplify. After all, in every era there are dissenting voices and rival movements. Modern societies – like, perhaps, all societies – have threads of rationality and irrationality, domains where emotion is praised and times when it is repressed.</p>
<p>As a result, a very different story of modernity could be told, arguing modernity actually represents the dawning awareness we must <em>relinquish</em> control and <em>divide</em> power. After all, modernity gave us the toleration valorised by <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/">Locke</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voltaire/">Voltaire</a>. The distrust of government that delivered the US Constitution. The elaboration of the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2856877">separation of powers</a> and democratic accountability. John Stuart Mill’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty">celebration of human diversity</a>. And the creation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/07/what-has-the-un-achieved-united-nations">institutions</a> (such as the United Nations), developed not to build heaven on earth, but merely to save us from hell.</p>
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<h2>A sweeping work</h2>
<p>In Bordoni’s book, “ethical violence” is a recurring theme rather than a singular focus. He engages in many intriguing discussions. It is impossible in a review to even mention the myriad ideas he raises. Indeed, in the book’s final chapter, the topic of ethical violence is entirely left behind, as Bordoni ruminates on technology, science, rationality, human individuality, loneliness and alienation.</p>
<p>Still, Ethical Violence is a valuable book for those who want their thinking to be challenged and enriched, to reflect on the modern condition, and to consider where we might all be heading.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Breakey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How can violence be viewed as ethical? Carlo Bordoni’s new book helps us understand why societies go to war and how they justify it.Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law. President, Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics., Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1902382022-09-14T02:34:17Z2022-09-14T02:34:17ZIf rugby is still a religion in New Zealand, how should its high priesthood respond to a crisis of faith?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484444/original/file-20220913-4826-tyuzik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4642%2C3094&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
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<p>Rugby football was the best of all our pleasures: it was religion and desire and fulfilment all in one.</p>
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<p><strong>– John Mulgan, Report on Experience (1947)</strong></p>
<p>Since failing to win the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the way the All Blacks have played – and often lost – has caused much anguish about a “crisis” in New Zealand rugby. It reached <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/300677663/crisis-what-crisis-this-is-not-all-black-apocalypse-the-rugby-brains-trust-says">boiling point</a> after the recent series loss to Ireland and first Test loss to Argentina.</p>
<p>Is the game’s administrative body, New Zealand Rugby (NZR), not up to the task? Have they and the All Blacks lost their way? Clearly something profound – existential even – is going on. In which case, maybe it’s time NZR turned to another kind of expert for answers.</p>
<p>Given it’s still common to talk of the “religion of rugby” in New Zealand, maybe the sociology of religion would be a good place to start.</p>
<p>The French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), for example, would be deeply worried – for the All Blacks and for New Zealand society – even after the All Blacks’ second Test redemption against Argentina. </p>
<p>Durkheim founded “functionalism”, the view that society is divided into parts and sub-parts that fit together. Each institution and social group has its own function to perform for the benefit of society – even rugby. </p>
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<h2>Anomie and the ABs</h2>
<p>For Durkheim, society is more than the sum of parts. If all the parts function well and are connected, then a new society occurs. If they don’t function and aren’t connected, then society and the individuals within it can suffer a breakdown in morals, values and meaning. </p>
<p>He called this “anomie”, where the collective consciousness of society fails to hold together and provide meaning. So the Bledisloe Test series beginning this week will be crucial for keeping that growing rugby anomie under control as we head toward the 2023 World Cup. </p>
<p>The notion of rugby as a religion first arose in 1908 following the Anglo-Welsh rugby tour of New Zealand. Durkheim viewed religion and society as interrelated; to worship your god is to worship your society, and so society is the real object of religious veneration. </p>
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<p>But because society is abstract and complex, we create “totems” as expressions of its identity and values. These become the objects of veneration and the expression of the collective consciousness. </p>
<p>Durkheim was also concerned that if the totems fail, the religion fails. The society then goes into decline. He would recognise the central totemic importance of the All Blacks for New Zealand society, and their role in the religion of rugby. </p>
<p>He would also identify the importance of the two central totemic figures: captain Sam Cane and head coach Ian Foster. Under them, New Zealand rugby has been suffering a totemic crisis. More losses will mean the loss of their totemic value, too.</p>
<p>In turn, those who find meaning and value through the totemic role of the All Blacks risk suffering a crisis of faith and meaning. In other words, they will suffer anomie. And when one section of a society suffers anomie, it can weaken the wider social glue. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484443/original/file-20220913-3906-q6sjkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484443/original/file-20220913-3906-q6sjkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484443/original/file-20220913-3906-q6sjkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484443/original/file-20220913-3906-q6sjkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484443/original/file-20220913-3906-q6sjkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484443/original/file-20220913-3906-q6sjkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484443/original/file-20220913-3906-q6sjkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Embattled totem: All Blacks head coach Ian Foster during the second test against Argentina on September 3.</span>
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<h2>The charisma deficit</h2>
<p>Maybe NZR might now look to sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), who would immediately identify the root cause of the problem as a lack of charismatic leadership – the source of authority, able to inspire others. </p>
<p>Distinguishing between the “priestly” and the “prophetic”, Weber would say Cane and Foster were appointed as priestly leaders to maintain the practices of the religious cult, yet neither has the required charisma. He might identify Crusaders coach Scott Robertson as the right prophetic leader to challenge the status quo.</p>
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<p>Turning to sociologist Peter Berger (1929-2017), NZR would learn that the decline in belief in the social function of rugby, and in its All Black totems, is perhaps inevitable due to New Zealand slowly becoming a properly modern society. </p>
<p>Weber would call this the “secularisation” of rugby and the All Blacks, most evident in the declining attendances at services in the churches and cathedrals of rugby (otherwise known as the National Provincial Championship and the Super Rugby competition). </p>
<p>He might link this to NZR’s own “rationalising bureaucracy”, which has seen contests and teams change, plus the effects of COVID restrictions and the impact of televising matches at nights. </p>
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<h2>A new rugby religion</h2>
<p>At this point, Berger might offer a glimmer of hope by reminding the board that, while it was believed religion would inevitably die out, the past 30 years have seen its return in many new ways and places. </p>
<p>His concept of a single, sacred “canopy” – the collective universe we use to give sense, meaning and order to our lives – has given way to a series of smaller, varied canopies to live under and between.</p>
<p>So, it’s not too late for NZR to restore rugby’s broken sacred canopy and give it meaning. The rise of schoolboy rugby as a new focus of meaning and identity, and the success of women’s rugby and sevens, all suggest a new pluralism within the game. </p>
<p>Rugby’s priesthood just needs to be open to a new, modern, meaningful order (what Berger would call “nomos”) where the secular non-rugby world and this new pluralistic rugby religion can coexist. </p>
<p>But Durkheim and Weber would both still stress the need for new totems and renewed charismatic leadership. If the rugby congregation slips into anomie, the effect can spread. After all, as has been said so often about rugby in New Zealand, it’s more than just a game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Grimshaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the All Blacks again fail to fire against Australia in the first Bledisloe Test, perhaps the game’s administrators should take advice from another group of experts entirely.Mike Grimshaw, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of CanterburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1484982020-11-19T17:02:19Z2020-11-19T17:02:19ZCoronavirus has put scientists in the frame alongside politicians – and poses questions about leadership<p>If there’s one thing we’ve got used to in the pandemic, it’s seeing our political leaders on TV standing next to scientists. So striking is the impact of scientists on policy that it has become hard to see such figures as anything other than leaders working alongside, rather than simply for, politicians.</p>
<p>The Swedish state epidemiologist <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5cc92d45-fbdb-43b7-9c66-26501693a371">Anders Tegnell</a> is a noteworthy example. His popularity in Sweden has reached levels normally beyond even the most popular political leaders. T-shirts bearing slogans such as “All power to Tegnell, our liberator” have become trendy, and more than one fan has had Tegnell’s face tattooed on their body. </p>
<p>Tegnell is given more airtime and was attributed greater leadership qualities than the Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven. Commentators have even referred to him as <em>landsfader</em> (father of the nation), which, with its overtones of Roman Augustan patriarchy, could hardly be more political.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Swedish man gets a tattoo of Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The US provides another interesting example of a scientist taking on a leadership role. Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease specialist and an important White House adviser, became a de facto leader for large parts of the population during the crisis. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/3/21206011/anthony-fauci-coronavirus-pandemic-stan-fandom-hero-donald-trump-white-house-task-force">Fauci’s fame and popularity</a>, especially in Democratic circles, is as striking as that of Tegnell in Sweden. And his stock as a national leader has risen to such a degree that he can credibly push back against some of Trump’s pronouncements.</p>
<p>It might not surprise us that scientists are involved in decision-making in a health crisis. Indeed, it seems obvious that politicians should call on scientific experts for help when facing a virus that poses a major threat to the population. Without scientific guidance, politicians and the public would struggle even more than they do now to navigate the pandemic. Yet from a historical perspective there is something rather unusual about today’s close alliance between scientists and politicians. In western culture, we have long been trained to understand the role of the scientist as standing in stark contrast to that of the politician. </p>
<h2>The leader and the bureaucrat</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2139277">an influential 1886 essay</a>, Woodrow Wilson, who was later to become the 28th US president, made a distinction between administration and politics. He argued that non-elected government officials should stay away from politics, which he understood as the realm of values-based decision making. </p>
<p>A few decades later, the German sociologist Max Weber made an even more influential distinction between <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_authority">the charismatic leader</a> and the bureaucrat. The charismatic leader follows their inner conviction in a passionate struggle for power, whereas the bureaucrat obediently follows their political superiors while keeping their own politics at bay.</p>
<p>Within such dichotomies, scientists – to the extent that they contribute to political decision-making – clearly fall into the same camp as bureaucrats. Their task is to report the facts impartially to politicians when they are instructed to do so, allowing the political leaders to then decide how these facts fit their values and their vision for society.</p>
<p>Such distinctions have become deeply ingrained in our thinking and can take extreme forms. They do not only give rise to the image of the paper-pushing, risk-averse bureaucrat, but they also shape the contrasting idea of the leader as someone who stands above the rules by which ordinary people must abide. </p>
<p>True leaders, we are led to believe, must have a vision that transcends our world. Instead of engaging with the world as it is – which is the bureaucrat’s domain – the goal of the political leader is to create a new order. Instead of representing the world as it is – the task of the scientist – their goal is to lead us to another better world, even if that means ignoring or falsely representing the one in which we live.</p>
<h2>False dichotomy</h2>
<p>The strict conceptual dichotomy between the leader and the bureaucrat/scientist is not mirrored in the messy reality of the day-to-day running of nations.</p>
<p>Inevitably, scientists bring their values into their research, in deciding what deserves to be studied in the first place (as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/">Weber acknowledged</a>) or how to communicate their results to a broader public. And, unlike their ideal counterparts, most real-life politicians and business leaders don’t consider themselves to reside in a sphere of pure “vision” that is above and beyond the realm of rules and facts.</p>
<p>Still, the leader-bureaucrat distinction continues to exert a great influence over us. And it can lead to problematic behaviour on both sides of the separation. </p>
<p>A traumatic lesson of the Holocaust is that the fantasy of the perfectly disinterested individual – concerned with nothing but obeying the rules set by their political superiors – can result in an evasion of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah-arendt-adolf-eichmann-banality-of-evil">moral responsibility</a>, with disastrous consequences. </p>
<p>On the political side, the current occupant of the White House is a perfect contemporary example of a leader who feels untrammelled by contemporary norms. A <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1742715020937886">post-truth leader like US president Donald Trump</a> is not an anomaly but rather an extreme manifestation of how we have come to think about leadership and what we have come to expect from our leaders.</p>
<p>The idea that politics and science reside in distinct realms is, in short, itself the cause of significant problems. In the end, we don’t want bureaucrats or scientists who evade responsibility in the name of objectivity. Nor do we want leaders who consider themselves above the law. Different professional groups perform different roles in society, but those roles cannot and should not be thought in terms of rule-following versus rule-breaking behaviour, or in terms of facts (scientists) versus values (politicians).</p>
<p>Against the background of this cultural image of leadership, the roles taken on by scientists such as Tegnell and Fauci can be seen as a very positive development. </p>
<p>Scientists in leadership roles clearly play an important part in dealing with the pandemic. But just as importantly, the sight of scientists taking up these positions also does something to our notion of leadership. In particular, it challenges the dichotomy between leaders and bureaucrats that underpins popular leadership notions, such as visionary leadership, transformational leadership and authentic leadership.</p>
<p>The obvious good sense in bringing the most knowledgeable people into the decision-making process reminds us that good leadership is informed and not disconnected from what is happening around us. It reminds us that it takes an interest in the present and is not merely a mobilisation of the masses by means of a projected future.</p>
<h2>Is science-based leadership possible?</h2>
<p>But a word of caution is also appropriate. In the media coverage of and commentary on the pandemic, one often encounters the celebration of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/new-zealand-ardern-election-science-climate-2648384056.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1">“science-based leadership”</a>, a notion that is reminiscent of the 19th-century fantasy of a society designed around the discoveries of science alone – as espoused by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/positivism">positivist philosophers</a>. </p>
<p>In this media narrative, countries that have done well in battling the virus, such as Germany and New Zealand, are depicted as “science-based”, whereas countries that have messed up, such as the US and Brazil, are “anti-science”. </p>
<p>“Science”, in much of the media, quickly becomes reduced to “the facts”, and the facts quickly become numbers. A country is deemed to be following a “science-based” policy when it closely monitors the latest numbers of COVID cases, deaths, people in intensive care, and so on, and adjusts its policy accordingly.</p>
<h2>Precautionary principle</h2>
<p>In reality, things are not quite so straightforward. The results of scientific research are rarely, if ever, sufficiently clear-cut to allow them to be turned into specific policy measures without a further layer of political consideration. And there is no established unity among different sciences that would allow contrasting findings in, say, epidemiology and psychology to be “scientifically” weighed against each other. </p>
<p>Also, instead of following, as natural and logical steps, from the results of research, much of the key policymaking in supposedly science-based responses to the pandemic relied on the precautionary principle: the taking of determined action on a just-in-case basis. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3RC7EGDtOYM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The precautionary principle explained.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New Zealand, for example, decided to “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0275074020941721">go hard and go early</a>”, before any significant body of scientific evidence was available to predict the outcomes of different approaches. Indeed, one way of conceiving of the precautionary principle more broadly is as a substitute for science when decisions need to be made and there is a limited amount of scientific evidence to provide a basis on which to make them. </p>
<p>While science is indispensable for a good understanding of what is happening today and how we may respond to it, it cannot come close to providing answers to all questions we are facing. The answers to bigger questions, such as those involving the setting of priorities (for example, balancing social wellbeing against short-term health outcomes), necessarily depend on value judgements. Weber gravely overshot the mark in his insistence that there are, and should be, two completely distinct sets of people, with one set acting in obedience to the other. But he was right in recognising that scientific input can only ever be limited in leadership decisions.</p>
<p>The popularity of the idea of science-based leadership is understandable as a counter-narrative to the way post-truth leaders have responded to the pandemic. If it merely points to the importance of scientific experts in mitigating the pandemic, there is also little to object to. But the kind of leadership that is needed in times of crisis (as well as in normal times, if such a thing exists) requires more than the inputting of numbers and swift decision making derived from calculating results. Ultimately, we must also reflect on how we want to live, what outcomes we value, and how to achieve these ends.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148498/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sverre Spoelstra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We shouldn’t see politicians and scientists as residing in distinct, separate realms.Sverre Spoelstra, Associate professor, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1360632020-04-09T14:46:41Z2020-04-09T14:46:41ZHow to celebrate Easter under lockdown<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326840/original/file-20200409-112635-qar213.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1022%2C530&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Before social distancing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Leonardo da Vinci, Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With churches closed and annual pilgrimages cancelled, Christians across the world are wondering how to give thanks to God this Easter. And not just Christians – think also of “<a href="https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/22-december/features/features/happy-christmas-folks">Chreasters”</a>. Do you attend church only at Christmas and Easter? If so, you’re a Chreaster, and you’re not alone – <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/18/when-easter-and-christmas-near-more-americans-search-online-for-church/">research shows</a> that Church of England attendance can increase by <a href="https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/29-november/news/uk/cathedrals-report-rise-in-attendance-during-holy-week-and-easter">50</a> to <a href="https://www.churchofengland.org/more/media-centre/news/christmas-attendance-highest-level-more-decade">100 per cent</a> at those times.</p>
<p>Even if we assume that most Chreasters attend church for cultural rather than strictly religious reasons, there will still be something missing for them and regular churchgoers this year. The lost opportunity to gather with one another in a community, to experience thanks and praise – and to do so within buildings often hundreds of years old, with songs and spoken words often thousands of years old. It is a lost opportunity felt most grievously when now is a time of loss – loss of normality, of society and, desperately, of individual life.</p>
<p>Christians – perhaps more than Chreasters – face another dilemma: should they support the decision to close churches or oppose it as others from <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/03/keep-the-churches-open">various</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/coronavirus-churches-florida-social-distancing">denominations</a> <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/22/orthodox-priest-arrested-in-greece-for-holding-mass-during-coronavirus-lockdown">have done</a>. Christians have risked suffering and death to worship before, so why not now, runs the argument.</p>
<p>There is no easy answer to that question. However, one response is to reimagine the notion of pilgrimage. As we follow government advice to “stay at home” it is possible to be stay-at-home pilgrims. Stay-at-home or (to borrow from <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ez7CAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Max Weber</a>) “everyday pilgrimage” is particularly associated with the Protestant Reformation.</p>
<h2>Martin Luther and faith</h2>
<p>Some of the most dramatic passages in Martin Luther reinterpret the relationship between work and worship. He describes <a href="https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/LutherMarriage.htm">changing nappies</a>, <a href="https://rockrohr.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Luther-WHETHER-SOLDIERS-TOO-CAN-BE-SAVED.pdf">being a soldier, and even executing criminals</a> as Christian works of love, if they are performed as expressions of faith.</p>
<p>In Luther’s theology, it is impossible for anyone to earn righteousness by works: going on a pilgrimage, becoming a monk, and changing nappies are just as ineffectual when it comes to salvation. Righteousness is <em>sola fide</em>, faith alone: the belief in Christ’s death as an atoning sacrifice for humanity’s sin – the sacrifice that Christians celebrate at Easter. But it is better to change nappies than to be a monk or nun, according to Luther (himself a former monk), who disliked the way they isolated themselves from not just everyday life, but ordinary human biology. </p>
<p>Monks and nuns <a href="https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/LutherMarriage.htm">exhibit</a> the “sin” of “pride” – they think they can <em>make themselves</em> holy by contradicting a direct edict from God to “<a href="https://biblehub.com/genesis/1-28.htm">Be fruitful and multiply</a>”. Rather than undertake monastic vows, Luther insisted that men and women glorify in family life – specifically recommending that fathers view changing nappies as something that can be done in “<a href="https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/LutherMarriage.htm">Christian faith</a>”.</p>
<p>Just like monks and nuns, the belief that <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/luther-nobility.asp">pilgrimage must be a literal journey</a> encourages people to think there are special places and activities that can make them holy – places and activities not muddied by ordinary life. But it is ordinary life that God created and into which he became flesh and blood. And it is ordinary sinners that he saves. For Luther, a Christian who changes nappies to care for family is not trying to <em>earn</em> something, but to <em>be</em> something: a faithful Christian who imitates <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/luther-freedomchristian.asp">Christ by loving and serving others</a>.</p>
<h2>Plough as pilgrimage</h2>
<p>Although stay-at-home pilgrimage is more obviously Lutheran, it is a theme in works on pilgrimage prior to the Protestant Reformation. William Langland’s 14th-century Piers Plowman criticises those who go on pilgrimage in search of holy shrines but not “truth”. Eventually, some genuine truth-seeking pilgrims appear and travel with Piers – but then they have to stop to help plough his “half-acre” field – it seems that this is the pilgrimage, rather than a distraction from it. </p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/two-wycliffite-texts-9780197223031?lang=en&cc=in">The Testimony of William Thorpe</a> distinguishes between “true” and “false” pilgrimage. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-2281.00151">Thorpe was on trial</a> for being a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HQPcCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Lollard</a>, a religious group that started in England in the 14th century. The Lollards anticipated many of the beliefs associated with the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LuAzDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=companion+to+lollardy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTtZmLrNvoAhXHfMAKHQLJAtIQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=companion%20to%20lollardy&f=false">later Reformation</a>, including the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UGi6WWtzkJYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">first efforts</a> to translate the Bible into English so that ordinary people could read it.</p>
<p>For Thorpe, true pilgrims are “discreet” where as false pilgrims make showy trips to Canterbury – which are just self-indulgent holidays. So indulgent, Thorpe laments, they even include playing bagpipes.</p>
<p>Bagpipes aside, the category of “everyday pilgrimage” is not itself without problems. <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ez7CAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=max+weber+spirit+of+capitalism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiW0LWShtroAhXQTxUIHQC9CU4Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=max%20weber%20spirit%20of%20capitalism&f=false">Weber</a> associated it with the rise of capitalism – and, by extension, the contemporary philosopher <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OYN88ArbxUAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=charles+taylor+sources+of+self&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZk82mgtroAhWsUBUIHThBAP4Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=charles%20taylor%20sources%20of%20self&f=false">Charles Taylor</a> and Cambridge University theologian <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xGq6BAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=banner+everay+ethics&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc6ru9gtroAhVASxUIHYyvDZYQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=banner%20everay%20ethics&f=false">Michael Banner</a> have seen it as underpinning the rise of a secular, consumerist society. If true pilgrimage is work and family life, it is not long before making money and having children are our religion.</p>
<p>But this is just to say “everyday pilgrimage”, like actual pilgrimage, is not an answer on its own. It would need, for example, to be part of a wider denominational reimagining of the digital church services that are happening this Easter.</p>
<p>In the present crisis, we can think of “everyday pilgrimage” together with John Bunyan’s more famous The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). Here, the character “Faithful” (one of the theological virtues: faith) learns from “Christian” (a Christian on his spiritual journey) that “a work of grace” is discoverable by “heart-holiness, family-holiness … conversation-holiness”. This is because, Bunyan writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The soul of religion is the practic[al] part … to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sadly, in the time of coronavirus, it is sometimes by not visiting others that we are loving them. But if our action (or inaction) each day is the best we can do in our current situation – and we are motivated by an “unspotted” or humble affection for the most vulnerable in society (<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-new-measures-to-protect-people-at-highest-risk-from-coronavirus">our own</a> “fatherless and widows”) – we can, like Bunyan’s Christian, count ourselves pilgrims, progressing together, faithfully through, and hopefully beyond, this present valley.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dafydd Mills Daniel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Churches will remain closed over Easter, but theologians have argued over the centuries that faith itself, not ritual, is the heart and soul of Christianity.Dafydd Mills Daniel, McDonald Lecturer in Theology and Ethics, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1002792018-07-24T08:57:05Z2018-07-24T08:57:05ZReligious decline was the key to economic development in the 20th century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228585/original/file-20180720-142426-n3gpnt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C46%2C995%2C513&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/home">from www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We have known for decades that secular countries tend to be richer than religious ones. Finding out why involves unpicking a complex knot of cognitive and social factors – an imposing task. So my small research team thought we’d ask a more straightforward question: was it the secular chicken that came first, or the economic egg?</p>
<p>Our <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/7/eaar8680">recent paper in Scientific Advances</a> shows that, in the 20th century, secularisation occurred before economic development and not the other way around. Although this doesn’t prove secularisation makes a country wealthier, it does rule out the reverse. The arrow of time points in one direction, so economic performance cannot be expected to influence people’s opinions in the past.</p>
<p>Global Gallup surveys give us a clear view of the relationship between <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx">secularisation and economic development</a> – that the world’s poorest countries are also its most religious. But before the days of modern surveys, the steam-powered scholars of the early 20th century had already noticed that industrialised societies tended to be less religious than agrarian ones; though they disagreed on the interpretation. </p>
<p>The early 20th century French sociologist Emile Durkheim <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Elementary_Forms_of_the_Religious_Li.html?id=eEk1AwAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">believed that economic development came first</a>. He saw religion as meeting society’s practical functions, such as education and welfare. But when prosperous societies started to meet these functions all by themselves, religion was pushed to the margins. On the other hand, a few decades later, the German sociologist Max Weber <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_C.html?id=vvZgDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">argued that religious change came first</a>. He wrote that the Protestant Reformation unleashed a stampede of productivity and economic improvement because of the “Protestant work ethic”.</p>
<p>Only one of them can be correct. For decades, economists and political scientists, armed with modern computers and advanced statistics, have tried to find out whether it was Durkheim or Weber. Some <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w19768">studies</a> found that secularisation came first, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10887-017-9142-2">some</a> found that development comes first, and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00036846.2016.1251562">still others</a> found they occur at the same time. </p>
<h2>Diving deeper into history</h2>
<p>My colleagues and I think one major shortcoming preventing us from getting to a solution has been a lack of historical depth. To measure a complex concept like “secularisation”, <a href="http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp">comprehensive surveying</a> is required. But this has only been possible in the majority of the world for just a couple of decades, since 1990. However, for the first time, we have found a way to dive deeper and cover the entire 100 years of the 20th century.</p>
<p>This temporal periscope presents itself when we bring together evidence from <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Secret_of_Our_Success.html?id=HFHpCAAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">anthropology</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402380701834747">political science</a> and <a href="http://mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262035385.001.0001/upso-9780262035385-chapter-6">neuroscience</a>: people’s beliefs and opinions form and harden during the first few decades of their lives. </p>
<p>Therefore, despite a lifetime of ups and downs, a person’s religious belief will always reflect their formative years. They unwittingly carry a fossilised version of how secular the society of their childhood was, right into the modern day. So if you want to know how religious the world was in the 1950s, then just see how religious the people are who came of age during the 1950s. </p>
<p>We did this by collating answers from the <a href="http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/">European Values Survey</a> and the <a href="http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp">World Values Survey</a>, which have asked people around the world about their religiosity since 1990. By pooling data for people who came of age at different decades of the 20th century, we were able to create a new secularisation time line.</p>
<p>We compared this with <a href="https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2018">100 years of economic data</a>. The image below shows that, in Great Britain, Nigeria, Chile and Philippines at least, the red secularisation line leads the blue economic development line. And our statistical analysis shows that this is the case in all of the 109 countries we measured. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228685/original/file-20180721-142411-1jjm74n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228685/original/file-20180721-142411-1jjm74n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228685/original/file-20180721-142411-1jjm74n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228685/original/file-20180721-142411-1jjm74n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228685/original/file-20180721-142411-1jjm74n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228685/original/file-20180721-142411-1jjm74n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228685/original/file-20180721-142411-1jjm74n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228685/original/file-20180721-142411-1jjm74n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How secularisation (red line) and economic development (blue line) have changed during the 20th century in Great Britain, Nigeria, Chile and Philippines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/7/eaar8680">Ruck, Bentley and Lawson.</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Individual rights set countries apart</h2>
<p>The message is crystal clear: secularisation occurs before economic development and not after it. This means we can rule out Durkheim’s functionalist model, but we cannot declare victory for Weber. Any human society is a cacophony of tangled causes, effects and dynamic emergent phenomena. To seek a single cause for anything in this arena is a mug’s game. So we checked if something else offers a more convincing explanation.</p>
<p>For example, a respect for the rights of individuals is the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Enlightenment_Now.html?id=xn83DwAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">moral triumph of the humanitarian revolution</a> and might provide the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/108/Supplement_4/21316">“leg up” that societies need to reach economic prosperity</a>. A respect for individual rights requires tolerance of homosexuality, abortion and divorce and we showed that secular societies only become prosperous once they have evolved a greater respect for these individual rights.</p>
<p>If we zoom in on different regions of the world, we see some rich countries that are religious and some poor ones that are secular. Countries like the US and the Catholic countries of Europe have become economically prosperous, yet religion remains important. Conversely, the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe are some of the most secular on Earth, but have middling economic performance. It turns out that it’s a respect for individual rights that separates the rich from the poor – despite the law sometimes being slow to catch up with people’s opinions in some countries.</p>
<p>Though we shouldn’t ignore the role of religion. It’s easy to see why individual rights flower once religious influence has withered. That said, there’s no reason why individual rights can’t exist in a religious world. If religious institutions can become less of a conservative force and embrace modern cultural values, then they could provide moral guidance for the economically prosperous societies of the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100279/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Damian Ruck received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Welcome Trust </span></em></p>Secular countries tend to be richer than religious ones. Now new research shows that it was secularisation which came first.Damian Ruck, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/955762018-04-25T19:33:53Z2018-04-25T19:33:53ZDebate: The rise of the global rejectionist party<p>Since the vote in favour of Brexit nearly two years ago, there has been accumulating and almost undisputed evidence that a populist wave is destabilising democracies across the West and beyond.</p>
<p>Rebellious public opinions have repeatedly shown in recent months their ability to shape political outcomes across the globe, often in unexpected ways: Pleas from established policymakers not to tempt the devil and to vote for the “obvious” candidate in an election or choose the “obvious” option in a referendum do not appear to be as influential as in the past. Public opinions seldom hear that message nowadays as they seem increasingly disenchanted with a system they may be accustomed to but whose actual benefits are growing unclear: after all, they wonder, what has remaining in the mainstream brought them over the years, apart from slower gains in real income, a greater likelihood of losing one’s status, increased insecurity, and the acceleration in the decline of influence of their government and country in the world?</p>
<p>The expression of the discontent with the status quo and the establishment parties is a central feature of this most recent brand of populism, which is more concerned with <em>rejecting</em> a system that is not meeting its promises than <em>promoting</em> an alternative that would work better. The rejectionists are increasingly disillusioned with yesterday’s promises of political and economic openness. Though they do not share a common political agenda or philosophy, and are not involved in a concerted effort – let alone a conspiracy – to undermine democratic processes and free markets across the globe, they share the perception that they have nothing to lose anymore from exploring what non-mainstream options have to offer – the traditional ones having unquestionably failed.</p>
<p>Evidence that rejectionists are increasingly influential is widespread: Political outcomes in the UK, in the US, in Italy – and to some extent in France and Germany – offer telling examples of this mind-set, while the instance of Colombia, where the government was initially unable to obtain public support to end the armed conflict with the FARC, suggests that this phenomenon is not purely western.</p>
<p>This rejection of traditional forms of political legitimacy and mainstream economic remedies will be a challenge to policymakers everywhere: Policymakers trying to counter the rejectionist message cannot rely on the fear of uncharted territories to sway public opinions towards more conventional candidates and choices anymore. In fact, that choosing the “obvious” option would lead to small, incremental improvements does not make the mainstream options and candidates legitimate as it did in the past. It appears that disenchanted public opinions are far more willing to sustain short-term losses or are far less averse to uncertainty, compared to previous generations, making the choice of radical options all the more so plausible.</p>
<p>As a result, traditional assumptions about the world and the state of public opinion are deeply flawed and unlikely to be conducive to the disruptive forms of policymaking that most countries require. Unless policymakers account for this pervasive rejectionist mind-set with new forms of governance and policy innovation, they are unlikely to be able to undermine what many headlines have characterised as the rise of populist movements, but which may turn out to be far more transformative than what previous historical examples suggest.</p>
<h2>Disenchantment with yesterday’s promises</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">German economist and sociologist Max Weber in 1894.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber#/media/File:Max_Weber_1894.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>German Philosopher Max Weber observed a growing sense of disenchantment among 19th century European elites who were taking their distance with religion in the name of enlightenment, rationality and science. (This theme is omnipresent in Weber’s work, see in particular <a href="https://books.google.fr/books/about/The_Sociology_of_Religion.html?id=abS61el-VEMC&redir_esc=y"><em>The Sociology of Religion</em></a>.) Central to this mind-set was the notion that Western societies should not be about the omnipotence of God but about the quasi-infinite capabilities of humankind and its ability to solve an ever-growing range of pressing problems. Disenchantment was therefore not pessimistic about the prospects of humankind. Relying on the Renaissance as a springboard for progress and the potential of science to increase societal welfare, this elite was convinced that Western societies had the ability to move forward even without religion as a mobilising force.</p>
<p>Disenchantment is therefore not new from a historical perspective. The willingness of any political force to put into question yesterday’s consensus about how the world should work and what the most efficient means of policy actions are can even be healthy for democracy by helping societies evolve. But its current manifestation, which seems to particularly focus on the failed promises of political and economic openness, should worry policymakers: if and when public opinions focus far more on past realities they want to come to term with rather than on the political, economic and societal projects they favour, continuous political instability and uncertainty are likely to become the new normal, thereby impeding any reform effort.</p>
<p>In the current global environment, public opinions are increasingly sceptical about the ability of their established government to protect them, economically and even physically. They are also increasingly convinced that rules of the game do not equally apply to everyone and that there is therefore a disconnect between the nature of one’s efforts and the likelihood of one’s success. This form of disenchantment with modernity may have lasting effects, in particular by making the possibility of protracted stalemates across the globe more significant in time.</p>
<h2>When mainstream fail to deliver</h2>
<p>The notion that traditional and mainstream policy recipes are not keeping middle classes safe was at the heart of many political debates and elections in recent months. This fuelled the rejectionist mind-set that we observed repeatedly.</p>
<p>In the United Kingdom, calling a referendum over the country’s membership in the EU was justified, argued then Prime Minister David Cameron in <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-21013771">January 2013 speech</a>, because of the popular discontent with Brussels that set the question of how London could cooperate with other EU-members to protect the British people and keep the country strong. This vote over Brexit in the United Kingdom admittedly took place in a country that was never particularly enthusiastic about the prospects of European integration. But the referendum shifted the burden of proof away from those who were unenthusiastic about the European project and who needed to offer alternatives onto the proponents of EU membership who were unable to make a convincing case in favour of it in the new global context.</p>
<p>And as hard as the proponents of EU integration in the UK tried, it proved ultimately difficult to convince a majority in public opinion that the small, incremental gains obtained within the European Union were worth the efforts and would unquestionably lead the country in a better position to face increased competition. Those who favoured Brexit were particularly empowered by the fact that no one was truly able to make the demonstration that the UK had everything to lose from leaving the European Union.</p>
<p>The 2016 US presidential election also offers a telling example of the rise of the rejectionists. It was tempting for pundits and non-US public opinions to see in Hillary Clinton an incarnation of continuity that the country would undoubtedly choose after two Obama mandates. What we failed to understand though is that Barack Obama won twice because he was able to respond to a very popular demand for political disruption. That demand persisted in 2016. It led states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which had been consistently blue since 1992, to favour Donald Trump, the true figure of disruption, over Hillary Clinton, the establishment figure <em>par excellence</em>. Continuity, in the eyes of a significant chunk of public opinions in these states, did not lie in the Clinton candidacy but in the Trump candidacy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216305/original/file-20180425-175047-1osdwuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216305/original/file-20180425-175047-1osdwuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216305/original/file-20180425-175047-1osdwuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216305/original/file-20180425-175047-1osdwuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216305/original/file-20180425-175047-1osdwuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216305/original/file-20180425-175047-1osdwuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216305/original/file-20180425-175047-1osdwuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">US president Donald J. Trump, February 24, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Vadon/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is unquestionably a paradox, considering that this about continuous disruption, rather than continuing stability as one may have expected. But this is at the same time a real demonstration of the public lack of aversion to uncertainty and to uncharted waters. The time when leaders built their credibility by inviting public opinions to unite in the wake of uncertainty has ended with the Donald Trump presidency: as a candidate, Donald Trump openly argued that the US should generate, not manage, global uncertainty so as to be stronger and more respected. What are regarded as the establishment and the elite have failed to deliver on their promise to keep Americans safe, security- and economic-wise. Trump’s ultimate victory suggests again that a significant number of Americans tend to believe they have more to lose from mainstream options – including those that put a premium on political and economic openness – than from unexplored ones.</p>
<h2>When rigged rules favour the cheaters</h2>
<p>What rejectionists take issue with is not simply the problem of possible social demotion: it is also about the inability to thrive in a world in which the rules are rigged. The perception no matter how hard one tries, the likelihood of succeeding is the same because of the insurmountable head start those well-off – today’s true insiders – have makes the current system all the more so questionable and easy to reject. This was a leitmotiv in many political discussions in the west, but was not limited to the west.</p>
<p>The inability of the Colombian government to get public support for its peace deal with the FARC guerrillas is evidence of this rejectionist rebellion against a dysfunctional system and suggests that the rejectionist mind-set is not a purely western phenomenon. The deal, designed to put an end to a half-century long civil war that had killed 250,000 people and displaced 6 million more, enjoyed broad support from the international community. But because it was perceived as far too lenient given the atrocities the guerrilla had committed over the years.</p>
<p>The promise of peace with the FARC did not assuage the need for justice after five decades of conflict and trauma that is likely to <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/colombia/2016-10-05/colombias-failed-peace">last beyond the war itself</a>. The fundamental point of rejection was the price that the country would need to pay to ultimately enjoy peace: in their cost-benefit analysis of the deal, Colombians ultimately focused far more on the cost of easily forgiving yesterday’s enemies than the government ever did. Strikingly, as it was the case in the UK during the Brexit debate, the burden of proof shifted away from the sceptics of peace to those who defended the agreement.</p>
<h2>France as a European paradox</h2>
<p>The case of France presents a paradox. Unlike Germany or the Netherlands, the so-called established parties did not succeed in containing the populist wave: what would have been considered as mainstream candidates two election cycles ago, given the historical weight of their respective party in domestic politics, did not manage to convince. Discontent with political insiders who “rigged” the system in their favour also influenced the outcome of this election – as what disqualified at least one of the favourites, former Prime Minister François Fillon of the moderate right, were a series of financial scandals that weakened the candidate’s credibility and ability to carry out reforms.</p>
<p>Instead, in that respect, the configuration resembles that of the US, the UK and Italy, where mainstream failed as a reasonably viable option: Emmanuel Macron, a candidate without a party before the election, and Marine Le Pen, the far right controversial contender, faced-off in a historical second round that led to a reconfiguration of French politics. The rejection of both mainstream candidates and a dysfunctional system were therefore omnipresent.</p>
<p>But where France may still also be different from the US and the UK – in addition to striking a real difference with its European neighbours – is that <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-answer-to-populism-protect-people-not-jobs/">disenchantment with politics allowed the political <em>centre</em> to emerge in the country</a>, perhaps signalling popular consent to reform in an unprecedented way for the country. Recent strikes in France resulting from these reforms suggest that the jury is still out on this government’s ability to be a true force of change – though it has been able to carry out already a set of significant changes on labour markets and taxes. But because of this difference, France could emerge is a lab for political reinvention – unless further disappointment tips the balance in favour of the country’s extremist parties and further fuel the rejectionist sentiment we observed elsewhere.</p>
<h2>The ultimatum from public opinions to policymakers</h2>
<p>The transformative potential of the rejectionist mind-set is therefore significant: it is not only shaping political processes and outcomes in unforeseen ways, but also empowering public opinions to challenge what they see as rigged rules. The troubling outcome of this new reality is that, more often than not, the objective of rejectionists lies far more in undermining the ability of policymakers to move forward or in impeding them from protecting an unwanted status quo, rather than in improving the overall quality of the political system. This phenomenon sheds light on the stalemate many countries perceive they find themselves in. Our ability to understand how we got to this stalemate will play a decisive role in designing comprehensive and constructive policies in this new global environment.</p>
<p>In fact, if traditional politicians and policymakers seem at a loss when it comes to coping with this new deal, it is often because they have failed to realise that they are now dealing with public opinions that have nothing to lose and who are therefore increasingly less averse to uncertainty. A game theory experiment called the ultimatum game, developed decades ago, captured the complexity of this situation. Yet, we only seem to realise the significance of this game today.</p>
<h2>The ultimatum game, revisited</h2>
<p>The setting of the ultimatum game is quite simple. A first player is presented with a sum of money. She must decide how much to keep for herself and how much to give to a second player she has no means of communicating with. If the second player agrees on the split the first player offered, this split becomes effective. If, however, the second player disagrees, neither player gets any money.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YXfEv-xEWtE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Ultimatum Game.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beyond the simplicity of the setup, the game is particularly significant because participants quickly understand that its solution lies in the combination of strategic bargaining and fairness. Human intuition, as well as lab experiments, suggest that while the first player will look to be strategic in her decision, the second player is likely to look for fairness. For instance, the second player should be satisfied with a 50-50 deal, which would be the fairest possible. But the first player could look to do better, without necessarily damaging her relationship with the second player: Would a 55-45 deal in her favour be that unacceptable for the second player? Or a 60-40 deal? Or an 80-20 deal?</p>
<p>Remarkably, in lab settings, the first player rarely goes to that extent and tries to remain “fair,” as a sign, perhaps of good gesture to the second player, in a bargaining process in which she cannot communicate with otherwise. (The literature is quite dense on this issue. See in particular <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2006907">“Bargaining and Market Behaviour in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An Experimental Study”</a>.) Even more remarkable, though, is the fact that this is not the outcome that game theory would expect: it contends that the second player should accept any deal that the first player offers so long as the sum of money he is getting is strictly greater than 0. Refusing would mean giving up on all monetary gains.</p>
<p>This experiment suggests though that humans who play this game do not only pay attention to monetary gains, as they also care about non-monetary consequences of their actions. In the case of outcomes that are repeatedly unfair, the second player may consider that he does not wish this game to played this way anymore and that he needs to demand changes. In particular, if lack of fairness persistently characterises the outcomes of the game in the long run, he may be inclined to reject the proposal, even if that means bearing the cost of not getting any monetary gains in the short run.</p>
<p>The ultimatum game is quite illustrative of what happens in a political system in which politicians, who consider themselves as “reasonable,” try to negotiate with <em>people who feel they have nothing to lose</em>. As hard as these politicians might try to convince public opinion of their good faith through incremental benefits, they will likely fail unless the political climate fosters confidence and consensus. In particular, when there is a significant number of “outsiders,” or people fearing to become so, that feel they have nothing to lose when it comes to rejecting a new deal or a new global strategy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216201/original/file-20180424-57611-14uddxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C42%2C2048%2C1318&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216201/original/file-20180424-57611-14uddxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216201/original/file-20180424-57611-14uddxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216201/original/file-20180424-57611-14uddxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216201/original/file-20180424-57611-14uddxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216201/original/file-20180424-57611-14uddxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216201/original/file-20180424-57611-14uddxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-TTIP protest, United Kingdom, Parliament Square, October 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/15320946157">Garry Knight/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why the fear of demotion drives the agenda</h2>
<p>As a result, the economics of the problem matter far less than its politics, especially when public opinion suspects that some chunks of society will benefit more – and thus, economic and societal inequalities will rise.</p>
<p>This is particularly significant when the prospect of secular stagnation – a sustained period of low economic growth and slow gains in real income – is fuelling fears of social demotion across a wide range of countries. The perception that the likelihood of losing a job and the responsibilities it entails, seeing the future generation’s prospects significantly worsen and observing those who do not play by the rules thrive is growing is at the heart of this fear of social demotion. While yesterday’s challenge was guaranteeing the survival of the tribe, today’s challenge is about preserving its rank in broader society – a challenge likely to be considered by many as a zero-sum game. The dream of the hard worker making it to the top – or helping future generations make it to the top – has been replaced by the fear of the insider wary of becoming tomorrow’s societal outsider.</p>
<p>This fear, which seems to be fuelling the sense of disenchantment that characterise today’s rejectionists, is the result of the evolving global income distribution that World Bank economist Branko Milanovic captured in his research and in particular in a graph that is commonly referred to as the <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-the-global-1-and-the-asian-middle-class-have-gained-the-most-from-globalization">“elephant chart”</a>: </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216371/original/file-20180425-175058-v9q7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216371/original/file-20180425-175058-v9q7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216371/original/file-20180425-175058-v9q7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216371/original/file-20180425-175058-v9q7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216371/original/file-20180425-175058-v9q7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216371/original/file-20180425-175058-v9q7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216371/original/file-20180425-175058-v9q7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘global incidence curve’ shows the world’s population along the horizontal axis, ranked from the poorest to the richest percentile; real income gains between 1988 and 2008 (adjusted for countries’ price levels) are shown on the vertical axis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-the-global-1-and-the-asian-middle-class-have-gained-the-most-from-globalization">Branko Milanovic/World Bank/HBS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whereas we would expect, looking at domestic data of income growth distribution, to see strong inequalities between the poorest and the richest, the situation at the global level is more complex: the data shows how, between 1988 and 2008, the income growth of Asian middle classes progressed far more significantly than those of the Western middle classes, and slightly more than the richest populations of the world. In other words, Western middle classes, who only enjoyed very modest income growth, find themselves stuck between two groups, the relatively poorer Asian middle classes and the richest of the world, whose income growth was phenomenal over the period.</p>
<p>While the link between globalisation and income growth is a source of <a href="https://hbr.org/2018/03/40-years-of-data-suggests-3-myths-about-globalization">debate</a> among experts, it is noteworthy that this unequal distribution of income growth is a key driver of the rise of the rejectionists. In particular, it validates the two common perceptions that the cases of the UK, the US, France and Colombia discussed above pointed to.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>First, traditional and mainstream policy recipes are not keeping middle classes safe, namely by guaranteeing their status in the world. As a result, public opinions feel justified in rejecting the status quo which undermines their survival ability in an increasingly competitive landscape.</p></li>
<li><p>Second, those who are truly taking advantage of the current business environment are those who are already well off – that is, those with a decisive head start that the less favoured cannot catch up with. This reality is all the more so harder to accept when political change is minimal and when mainstream recipes look like tools designed to preserve the unbearable status quo, that is, in turn, far easier to challenge or even to reject.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In a nutshell, not only is the situation becoming increasingly competitive: the rules of the game are also rigged to the extent that honest efforts are unlikely to be rewarded. This justifies radical change in the eyes of public opinion. The extent to which policymakers will be able to respond to this demand is largely uncertain but will be a crucial factor of success.</p>
<h2>Time to reinvent policymaking</h2>
<p>Before they shaped today’s politics, disruptors were – and remain – a particularly active group in business. And the fundamental lesson one could draw from the management field literature is that the only way to deal with these transformative agents is to ultimately disrupt the disruptors so as to regain some control over the global environment. This is by no means trivial: given the state of disillusion and disenchantment of public opinions across the globe, it is unlikely that there are low hanging fruits to grab in order to impress rejectionists who do not feel any burden of proof anymore.</p>
<p>In the future, policymakers that will be most influential are those who can truly reinvent policy approaches. There are a wide range of policies that would correspond to that goal. Two are discussed below: protecting people rather than jobs, and being pragmatic enough to ultimately pay off those who are likely to be the most significant losers of change and thus the most forceful rejectionists.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216202/original/file-20180424-57588-12f0yvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216202/original/file-20180424-57588-12f0yvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216202/original/file-20180424-57588-12f0yvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216202/original/file-20180424-57588-12f0yvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216202/original/file-20180424-57588-12f0yvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216202/original/file-20180424-57588-12f0yvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216202/original/file-20180424-57588-12f0yvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-Brexit protest in London, June 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/edeverett/27932981406/in/photolist-JwDmxJ-Jym2iE-JsozCs-JykQcG-JBpDM2-HFetsS-JbFh2W-JBnzpn-S8UJDV-J3rdtm-HgrkxH-HgfP6G-J5K8dc-T8Zs6q-S6kQyu-JcnVcT-Te8DRh-JuxEq2-SGQdSs-JK6Q1F-S6kPCm-JckMyk-JckSB6-HgfQim-MREKL1-Tj4vq6-PwPRL4-Ym73A2-Ym73mz-Ym6XfH-CDcgcV-XjMM28-YyDmsK-Ym6X4F-XjMPAg-XjMMg6-XjMNPg-XjMPQp-YyDmAR-YyDmN4-D36rMn-MawnWs-JbEXTw-JbF511-JBnvWv-TjcasW-25pqkLJ-UfDoYG-UAmD5d-246mS1t">Ed Everett/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Protecting individuals, not jobs</h2>
<p>In the era of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” populist movements often claim a monopoly in speaking truths to the public. Among those truths, central is the notion that the “establishment” has not done enough to protect jobs and industries by avoiding – let alone forbidding – outsourcing. It is particularly central because this view is perhaps the most widely shared among populists and their followers. It is particularly influential because it serves as a strong justification for protectionism – and, in some extreme degrees, for a nationalistic and anti-immigration agenda.</p>
<p>But if policymakers are seeking to undermine populists, they bear the burden of proof when it comes to refuting these so-called truths. In particular, a rising consensus in the economic literature suggests that automation and technology, not globalisation and free-trade, are the <a href="http://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf">main culprits when it comes job destruction</a>. The real offensive argument that would truly undermine the populist discourse on this topic would point to the fact that while governments have the authority to close borders and curb free trade, they are unlikely to have the power to stop technological change. Protectionism is therefore unlikely to provide the protection rejectionists are yearning for.</p>
<p>Instead, the real response to job destruction may lie far more in protecting individuals rather than jobs, as French Nobel-laureate Jean Tirole has <a href="https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/jean-tirole-we-must-protect-the-worker-not-the-job/">suggested</a>. In practice, protecting people requires substantial investments in life-long training and in improving labour market fluidity. Disruptive policy in this field would lie in leveraging the amount of information available online – both in terms of content individuals need to master to acquire additional skills and in terms of positions and job openings – to help workers increase their degree of awareness of their employability and what they lack to move forward. The policy or business entrepreneur able to merge Coursera and LinkedIn may achieve far more in terms of improving employment perspectives than any populist or, for that matter, any rational and traditional approach ever would – unless it is the private sector which decides on that merger in a scenario that one could deem far more likely.</p>
<p>The economics of the problem would once again dominate the messy and easy to manipulate politics of it. That would provide a clean slate to policymakers in their effort to rebuild the broken societal consensus that once constructively mobilised public opinions.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Nobel Laureate Jean Tirole explains the economics of ethics.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Paying off the losers of the game</h2>
<p>Disruptive policymaking, even in democratic societies, even with the appropriate safeguards and safety nets, and even with more empowered individuals, can undoubtedly lead to the same instability that rejectionists have generated. This is particularly true if there is an irreducible share of vulnerable people in society that are especially ill-equipped to face global competition. Unless policymakers look to compensate them, they are unlikely to undermine the current momentum of rejectionists. The name of the game is not “pay to play” anymore, but “pay to reform.”</p>
<p>Pay to reform would require a shift away from discretionary spending to maintain social peace and keep core constituencies happy, onto another form of discretionary spending, meant to facilitate reforms by twisting the cost-benefit analysis of those that have the most to lose from change. The first criterion that leads a government handout to take place should be whether or not such a handout can make a reform easier, not how much popularity it will bring. This is the ultimate form of investment in the future considering that it enables governments to remove the remaining obstacles to needed change by helping actors in obsolete industries transition out of an activity and into a newer one.</p>
<p>Ultimately, in order to nudge the most vulnerable who likely have a lot to lose from these reforms and when empowerment is unlikely to suffice, governments can also rely on direct cash transfers. Analyst Antoine Levy, in an <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/europe/mgi-essay-prize-crowdsourcing-ideas-for-revitalizing-growth-in-europe">award-winning essay</a>, suggested offering workers from industries that are particularly vulnerable to global competition – and to automation and technological change, one might add – compensation indexed on their country’s GDP growth. In addition to shifting the cost-benefit analysis of these workers, such measure – or any variant based on other indicators for that matter – would also provide additional social glue to mobilise public opinions around consensus-building projects. That social glue would lessen the effects of the most divisive debates that have allowed the rejectionist set of mind to emerge.</p>
<h2>Neither left nor right: time for a political reconfiguration</h2>
<p>It would be hard to characterise these two examples of disruptive policies – protecting individuals rather than jobs and paying the most vulnerable to carry out reforms – as either progressive or free-market oriented. To the extent that they are designed to protect people, and vulnerable populations in particular, progressives could justify both on the grounds of necessary redistribution and safety nets. To the extent that they are designed to empower individuals and to improve the overall ecosystem in which they can thrive, free-market proponents could justify both as well on the grounds that they allow for reforms to happen.</p>
<p>In fact, contrary to popular belief, it is not impossible to reconcile empowerment and protection. But doing so requires far more disruption than established policymakers have been willing to take on in the past. And the question is not whether or not the system can absorb such shocks: public opinions have already demonstrated that they not only can, but also inclined to generate them if policymakers fail to do so. The real question lies in determining what upset and disappointed rejectionists turn to next if disruptive policymaking does not occur now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Ghez ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Since the Brexit vote in 2016, rebellious movements have repeatedly shown their ability to shape political outcomes across the globe, often in unexpected ways: So what lies next?Jeremy Ghez, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, HEC Paris Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/941432018-04-02T18:59:10Z2018-04-02T18:59:10ZCambridge Analytica’s ‘secret’ psychographic tool is a ghost from the past<p>The ongoing Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal has revealed just how vulnerable our social-media data are to exploitation. Marketers, political groups and shadowy third parties can now harvest our information, divide us into homogenous groups and send targeted messages in ways that are far beyond anything imagined even a decade ago.</p>
<p>Many articles have summarised the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election">events, participants and actions</a> – in particular the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/technology/facebook-zuckerberg-data-privacy.html">unethical ones</a>. However, our attention was drawn to the fact that there is currently little empirical evidence of the actual effectiveness or impact of the psychographic analytical tools used by Cambridge Analytica (CA). This is surprising, considering that the method has been asserted to be the “ultimate marketing weapon”.</p>
<p>This articles stems from our experience and exchanges with scholars in consumer and marketing research, who are perhaps most familiar with the development of market research and segmentation methods and practice over time.</p>
<h2>Beyond mere demographics</h2>
<p>The psychographic-segmentation tool employed by Cambridge Analytica extends the traditional marketing audience or voter analysis beyond simple “demographics” (age, gender, education) toward profiling based on personality traits and value-based scores. Combined with “big data” from Facebook profiles and algorithmically enhanced statistical analysis and stealth marketing tactics, this method has arguably become an enviable digital marketing secret, not least among advertising and marketing professionals.</p>
<p>While much of the public discussion on the CA case has been about how massive amounts of Facebook data have been unethically obtained and used for the purpose of influencing voter behaviour in the US elections and the Brexit, relatively little has been said on the exact analytical method used by the firm and the extent of its contribution to the voting results. According to a detailed account by <a href="https://theconversation.com/psychographics-the-behavioural-analysis-that-helped-cambridge-analytica-know-voters-minds-93675">Michael Wade</a> of IMD Business School, Cambridge Analytica was able to identify the profiles of more than 50 million Facebook users by matching two different approaches and data sources. First, the results of 270,000 personality tests obtained through a <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-impossible-for-facebook-users-to-protect-themselves-from-data-exploitation-93800">quiz-like Facebook app</a> developed by Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan. Second, the results were statistically related to “digital footprints of human behaviour” of these respondents and their (unaware) Facebook friends’ profiles, thanks to a model developed by another Cambridge academic, <a href="https://applymagicsauce.com/">Michal Kosinski</a>.</p>
<p>As a result, psychographic information about millions of people were automatically derived from Facebook data, without the usually burdensome process of personality questionnaires that take hundreds of questions to answer by each analysed participant. This sort of “reverse engineering” (as Wade calls it) based on social media users’ activity means that only about 100 Facebook “likes” are enough to estimate a person’s psychological traits. Information such as liking, say, Salvador Dalì or Lady Gaga would serve as an indicator of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/technology/facebook-cambridge-behavior-model.html">personality type</a> – for example, openness. The machine-learning implementation and more detailed analytical procedure is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhvX9QCiZP0">summarised in video</a> featuring Jack Hansom from SCL elections, company affiliated to Cambridge Analytica.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IhvX9QCiZP0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Summary of the machine-learning implementation and analytical procedure.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some have claimed that using Facebook likes as psychometric indicators can produce <a href="https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/59jbzd/the-study-that-cambridge-analytica-based-their-model-on-has-a-terrifyingly-accurate-personality-analysis-for-you">“terrifyingly accurate personality analysis”</a>, yet this method has significant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/22/are-cambridge-analyticas-insights-even-that-insightful">methodological limits</a>. For example, liking a Facebook page is not an individual action performed in isolation, like the systematically filling out a questionnaire. Instead, it is an inherently social and symbolic act – and needs to be interpreted in the context of the platform and its uses.</p>
<p>Considering the accuracy of CA’s predictions, two other points need to be critically considered. First, if psychographic analysis is relevant at all for deriving marketing insights. Second, whether micro-targeted advertising content via psychographic techniques really has the capacity to <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/23/17152564/cambridge-analytica-psychographic-microtargeting-what">manipulate people’s minds</a>.</p>
<h2>A weapon from the past?</h2>
<p>In marketing and consumer research, market-segmentation techniques have grown out of the fact that it is simply not effective, nor even feasible, for a marketer to try to influence everyone at once with the same message. Therefore, the targeting of a specific subgroup – one that would be more likely to react in a desired manner to the intended marketing message – becomes the practice and theory of marketing communication. However, the logic for choosing effective segmentation and targeting criteria has changed importantly over the years, not least due to technological changes and possibilities.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212959/original/file-20180403-189795-hsazx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">German economist and sociologist Max Weber in 1894.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber#/media/File:Max_Weber_1894.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the work of theorists in the early 20th century – for example, Thorsten Veblen and Max Weber, who recognised that consumption behaviour is closely tied with social structures (and vice versa) – the marketing scholars and practitioners in the post–World War II mass-media era have relied heavily on individualist and behavioural psychological paradigm. It is fair to say this has been the golden age of psychographic market segmentation in which target group has been profiled and expressed in terms of their personality traits or value system scores (for example, the <a href="http://www.strategicbusinessinsights.com/vals/ustypes.shtml">VALS system</a>). </p>
<p>However, the personality/value-based measurement has consistently been challenged for its ability to predict actual behaviours, such as a specific product, brand or environmental choice (<a href="https://books.google.fr/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XxLaBwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA4&dq=wedel+and+kamakura+market+segmentation&ots=LYyVF2GWvW&sig=qM1hPq6FfX7GWwnd4NrYpaaGl5I#v=onepage&q=wedel%20and%20kamakura%20market%20segmentation&f=false">Wedel and Kamakura 2000</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1470-6431.2008.00710.x">Rokka and Uusitalo 2008</a>). Moreover, these approaches assume that behavioural patterns are shaped by differences in “global” psychological states or values (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) that are thus <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/23/4/326/1817397">“necessarily devoid of any influence of sociohistorical context”</a> (Holt 1997, 327). Put differently, an abstracted and universalised personality type cannot capture the complexity and cultural sensitivity of consumer lifestyle choices, symbolic expression and tastes.</p>
<p>This shift in thinking put an end to wider application of psychographic methods long ago, at least in the field of marketing and consumer research. Instead, four decades of work have testified to the importance of sociocultural perspectives that are much more sensitive to the social and symbolic systems that shape our lifestyle-relevant choices and tastes (<a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article/31/4/868/1812998?searchresult=1">Arnould and Thompson 2005</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/23/4/326/1817397">Holt 1997</a>). This perspective is also shared by researchers in the <a href="http://lifestyle.em-lyon.com">Lifestyle Research Centre</a> of EM Lyon. An analysis of Facebook likes from this standpoint would be understood more as the analysis of individuals’ lifestyle associations and networks governed by socially established expressions of taste. Main difference of the psychographic segmentation to this form of socio-cultural lifestyle analysis would be its lack of connection to society and its cultural currents.</p>
<h2>Propoganda’s power – or not</h2>
<p>A second issue evoked in the Cambridge Analytica debate is the supposed manipulative power of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/03/23/four-and-a-half-reasons-not-to-worry-that-cambridge-analytica-skewed-the-2016-election/">big data–based psychographic approaches</a> that bear rather naïve assumptions about <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03880-4">how communication and advertising work</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1930s – the heyday of totalitarian propaganda – the dominant theory for the effects of mass media on a population posited that political messages were “magic bullets” that, once they reached the targeted audience, would have immediate persuasive power. This simplistic view was rejected a decade later by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Choice-Voter-Presidential-Campaign/dp/0231085834">Paul Lazarsfeld and colleagues</a> at Columbia University. Their empirical work relativised the power of political propaganda, demonstrating that message effects are largely mediated by interpersonal relations and collective interpretations – for instance, political views are also discussed and formed during family dinners and not simply absorbed from the media (<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2011.01381.x">Neuman and Guggheneim 2011</a>). Similar considerations also resonate widely in advertising and marketing research. For example, there exists a body of academic literature that indicates that, based on empirical evidence, advertising does not increase or reduce alcohol consumption (<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10253866.2016.1160230">Tikkanen and Aspara 2017</a>).</p>
<p>With the rise of big data–based psychographic segmentation, however, the old “magic bullet” thesis has apparently gained new popularity. Cambridge Analytica’s bragging of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/world/europe/whistle-blower-data-mining-cambridge-analytica.html">“psychological warfare”</a> stands as a case in point. We cannot argue there is no value in, nor evidence of, the ability of psychometric segmentation to achieve marketing goals – indeed, a <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/23/17152564/cambridge-analytica-psychographic-microtargeting-what">recent study</a> found a 40% increase in some click-through rates. However, there is still little or no evidence of the extent to which it can persuade people to change their minds about even product or brand choices – much less vote differently.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94143/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The ongoing Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal has generated big headlines, but consumer and marketing research have long questioned the actual effectiveness of psychographic segmentation.Joonas Rokka, Professeur associé en marketing, EM Lyon Business SchoolMassimo Airoldi, Postdoctoral researcher, EM Lyon Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/833402017-10-25T00:17:07Z2017-10-25T00:17:07ZMartin Luther’s spiritual practice was key to the success of the Reformation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191701/original/file-20171024-30558-51qqjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Luther's 95 Theses.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Luther95theses.jpg">Ferdinand Pauwels, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his <a href="http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html">95 Theses</a> to the door of Germany’s Wittenberg Castle Church and inadvertently ushered in what came to be known as the Reformation. </p>
<p>In his theses, Luther explicitly attacked the Catholic Church’s lucrative practice of <a href="http://martinluther.ccws.org/indulgence/index.html">selling papal indulgences</a> that promised individuals they could purchase absolution from their sins and hasten their way into heaven. </p>
<p>This was far more than a simple critique of the indulgence trade. Luther <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-34/dr-luthers-theology.html">challenged</a> the Church’s overall authority. Over the next century, Luther’s ideas <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2016.07.007">seeded upheavals</a> and transformed the Western world by diminishing the Church’s power and introducing new spiritual possibilities for everyone.</p>
<p>In researching our book, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-spiritual-virtuoso-9781474292429/">“The Spiritual Virtuoso,”</a> we found Luther’s personal life and spiritual practice played a key role in shaping his message and drawing enthusiastic support from ordinary people.</p>
<h2>How Luther’s message spread</h2>
<p>Luther had once been a friar in the strict monastic <a href="http://www.augustinian.org/order/">Order of St. Augustine</a>. The head of the order, Johann von Staupitz, however, believed that Luther could serve God better if he were no longer isolated from the larger society. </p>
<p>Staupitz arranged for Luther to pursue doctoral studies and join the University of Wittenberg as a professor of biblical theology. When Luther posted his theses, he was both an ordained priest and a professor. </p>
<p>Luther’s students were among the first to respond enthusiastically to his message that all Christians were equal in God’s eyes and could reach heaven based on their own faith. His students also believed that they had the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1262373">moral obligation</a> to share their new understanding, so that more people could benefit from it.</p>
<p>They spoke of reforming the church to members of the growing urban middle classes. They reached out to townspeople by <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122411435905">translating the Latin Bible</a> into vernacular German and encouraging education for men and women alike. </p>
<p>As the movement built up, guildsmen, merchants and aristocrats came to share Luther’s vision of an authentic, incorruptible Church grounded in spiritual equality. Prince Fredrick the Wise, the University of Wittenberg’s founder, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2012.01680.x">became one of Luther’s early advocates</a> and other princes provided him with political protection and financial help.</p>
<h2>Life as a monk</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Luther.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/1533_Cranach_d.%C3%84._Martin_Luther_im_50._Lebensjahr_anagoria.JPG">Lucas Cranach the Elder, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, it was not just Luther’s ideals that contributed to his success. We found that it was also his personal story of spiritual renewal that added to his extraordinary appeal. </p>
<p>As the German states became more urban, more commercial and more affluent, the old social order was disrupted and the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1262373">Church increasingly removed</a> itself from its members’ daily dilemmas. </p>
<p>At the time, Luther, following the wishes of his father, was pursuing law. However, <a href="http://www.luther.de/en/leben/moench.html">dismayed by</a> an increasingly materialistic society, he abandoned his legal studies to enter the friary of the Augustinian hermits.</p>
<p>Luther remained a monk for nearly 20 years. During his early years in the monastery, Luther obsessed about his personal failings and sins and worked hard to excel as a monk. Beginning his day at 3 a.m., Luther tried to purify himself through practices like fasting, confession, reading scriptures late into the night and silently praying at almost every moment. </p>
<p>For penance, he fasted to the point of emaciation and would even strike himself with a whip. </p>
<h2>The spiritual virtuoso</h2>
<p>We call Luther a “spiritual virtuoso” because he completely devoted his life to religious study and practice. His intense commitment to spiritual perfection resembled the perseverance of outstanding virtuosi in fields like music, athletics or dance.</p>
<p>During his career, Luther wrote thousands of sermons and pamphlets, composed hymns, preached every week and <a href="https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/martin-luther-lessons-from-his-life-and-labor">engaged in tireless work</a> on behalf of the emerging Protestant churches. </p>
<p>Over a century ago, the German sociologist Max Weber thought about hermits’ and monks’ isolation, self-denial and intense dedication and defined their absolute commitment <a href="http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Virtuoso.htm">as a kind of virtuosity</a>.</p>
<p>Spiritual virtuosi devote themselves to comprehending and <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814798041/">enacting a higher spiritual purpose</a>. They are willing to sacrifice their earthly comforts and pleasures in order to reach unity with God or another higher power.</p>
<p>The essence of spiritual virtuosity is personal humility. To that end, virtuosi tend to be reluctant leaders. Because of their unease with worldly power, they are wary of having themselves confused with the message. Luther was not interested in leading a social movement or reaping material rewards. What he wanted to do was to serve God and bring God’s word to others. </p>
<p>It was the students in Luther’s movement, and the clergy who supported them, who became the key activists and organized widespread support in Wittenberg, Basel and other university towns. We call them “virtuosi activists.” Luther himself preached, lectured and debated, but he was not much troubled with strategy or organizational tactics of organizing a movement.</p>
<p>In 1530, when the emerging Protestant movement presented its <a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds3.iii.ii.html">profession of faith</a> to the German emperor in Augsburg, Luther played a minor role and did not even attend the conference. Luther’s central goal was to show people how to reach toward God through personal faith. </p>
<h2>Luther’s impact</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Side of collection box of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society that served as a collection box for contributions to the Abolitionist cause.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARemember_Your_Weekly_Pledge_Massachusetts_Anti-Slavey_Society_collection_box.jpg">Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University via Wikimedia Commons.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Protestant Reformation was the first significant social movement in modern history that was organized by activist spiritual virtuosi. Since then, other social movements have built upon Luther’s ideals of spiritual equality.</p>
<p>In the 19th century, the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20051029170656/http://americanabolitionist.liberalarts.iupui.edu/">American anti-slavery movement</a>, for example, emphasized spiritual equality of everyone before God, not just white Christians. The 20th-century human potential movement, building on the earlier work of spiritual equality, focused on the immense potential in each person and the <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814732878/">importance of communicating directly</a> with a higher power in many different ways. </p>
<p>Today, smaller contemporary virtuosi activists continue to enact and expand the ideas. We believe groups like the <a href="https://sojo.net">Sojourners’</a> community and the <a href="http://www.sanctuarynotdeportation.org/">Sanctuary movement</a> are examples of such work, for they spread faith in spiritual equality. </p>
<p>The rebellion against the Roman Church was wholly unanticipated and succeeded against all odds. In showing new spiritual possibilities, Luther also showed us one way to bring about social change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83340/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, two scholars explain how Luther’s personal and spiritual life contributed to his success.Marion Goldman, Professor Emeritus, University of OregonSteve Pfaff, Professor, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/844022017-09-21T12:10:01Z2017-09-21T12:10:01ZAusterity’s enduring appeal has ancient roots in asceticism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187002/original/file-20170921-8233-1w3ioue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Man%27s_Bible#/media/File:BritLibRoyal14CVIIFol006rMattParisSelfPort.jpg">British Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent easing of the public sector <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2017-09-12/HCWS127/">pay cap</a> suggests that the government is beginning to respond to widespread concerns about the social and economic costs of austerity. Yet despite this turn, the proposed rises remain <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41241295">below real-terms inflation</a>. Plus, the need for continued austerity is justified in terms of being <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2017/september/prime-ministers-questions-7-september-2017/">“fair”</a> to those who must pay for wage increases as well to as those who will receive them. </p>
<p>Despite increasing opposition, austerity remains a potent force in politics today. This should not surprise us. The modern narrative of austerity has a long cultural history, which we can trace from medieval religious writers to 20th century philosophers.</p>
<p>Part of austerity’s appeal is that it justifies present suffering through the promise of future prosperity. No matter what the arguments against austerity, from <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/amartya-sen-economic-consequences-austerity">past</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion">present</a> economists, the huge cost for public services is somehow seen as a price worth paying. Philip Hammond, chancellor of the exchequer, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40487982">insists</a> that “we must hold our nerve … and maintain our focus resolutely on the prizes that are so nearly within reach”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187013/original/file-20170921-4317-n9lbh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187013/original/file-20170921-4317-n9lbh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187013/original/file-20170921-4317-n9lbh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187013/original/file-20170921-4317-n9lbh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187013/original/file-20170921-4317-n9lbh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187013/original/file-20170921-4317-n9lbh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187013/original/file-20170921-4317-n9lbh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After seven years of austerity, ministers have signalled they will slightly lift the public sector pay cap for police officers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This language is telling. It is part of an ongoing narrative about how restraint and self-denial are good for you. This perceived moral value is not without precedent. Historically, there have been numerous cultural manifestations of austerity that shed light on its enduring appeal and the rhetoric associated with it.</p>
<h2>Morally correct</h2>
<p>Austerity is closely related to the ancient concept of asceticism, the art of abstinence practiced by Greek and Roman philosophers, continued by medieval religious writers, and made famous by the theorist Max Weber in his 1922 book Economy and Society. Asceticism has many definitions, usually equating a simple life to a moral one. It is often seen as religious, an ideology based on the fact that present self-denial will enable future liberation from want. </p>
<p>Biblical scholar Richard Valantasis puts this in very positive terms, calling asceticism the “dream of being a better person” <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1cgf9xc">in his book</a> on the subject, The Making of the Self. But Weber extends the religious and philosophical dimensions of asceticism to economics when he argues that capitalism is inherently ascetic, suggesting that it thrives through self-restraint and hard work.</p>
<p>Weber equates asceticism and rationality; austerity, he says, is both sensible and logical, and it provides the individual with inward fulfilment. Thus, when governments pursue austerity policies and accuse their opponents of being selfish and wasteful, they draw on a cultural narrative that views self-denial as ethically, morally, and even spiritually, correct.</p>
<p>This is certainly the language that former chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne, used in June 2010 when austerity was first introduced in the UK. His <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/7846849/Budget-2010-Full-text-of-George-Osbornes-statement.html">emergency budget</a> valorised austerity as moral:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It pays for the past. And it plans for the future. It supports a strong enterprise-led recovery. It rewards work … Yes, it is tough; but it is also fair.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Promise and purpose</h2>
<p>The idea that austerity is “tough” but good for you echoes ascetic ideals clearly. Asceticism is a formative process as it shapes an individual through hard work (in Weber’s view) and gruelling self-denial (in the view of medieval writers). The fourth-century bishop Athanasius of Alexandria – a father of the Christian church – characterised the moral life as one of renunciation and suffering. He also praised discipline and labour as virtues that will lead to pleasing God, and ultimately to the rewards of heaven. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187006/original/file-20170921-11337-hz4wey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187006/original/file-20170921-11337-hz4wey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187006/original/file-20170921-11337-hz4wey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187006/original/file-20170921-11337-hz4wey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187006/original/file-20170921-11337-hz4wey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187006/original/file-20170921-11337-hz4wey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187006/original/file-20170921-11337-hz4wey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Iconic: Athanasius of Alexandria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ikone_Athanasius_von_Alexandria.jpg#filelinks">wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The story of present suffering leading to future prosperity therefore weaves concerns about one’s current struggles into a grander narrative of purpose. It gives an unstable life meaning through discipline, and <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo5939842.html">according to the cultural critic Geoffrey Galt Harpham</a>, leads to understanding of oneself, one’s community, and one’s place in the world. </p>
<p>These ascetic ideals remain imbued in Western cultural thinking and suggest why the narrative of modern economic austerity has stuck for so long. Austerity provides a sense of purpose, of striving for achievement, and of self-control. This is evident in the way that austerity is sold to the public – hence Hammond’s comment:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After seven long and tough years, the high-wage, high-growth economy for which we strive is tantalisingly close to being within our grasp. It would be easy to take our foot off the pedal. But instead we must hold our nerve.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By using the language of shared experience, shared struggle, and shared results, austerians attempt to construct a collective identity that unites people in their vision. The fact that austerity affects people in drastically different ways is secondary to creating the sense that we are striving for a common good. In the Middle Ages it was promoted to give spiritual meaning to physical deprivation. Today it does the same for economic hardship.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with the ideals of asceticism per se. Self-control and self-restraint are admirable qualities and have been praised throughout history. The problem is when these qualities are evoked on a national scale to justify economic self-harm. </p>
<p>The Conservatives’ loss of their majority in the most recent election suggests that those experiencing austerity might be beginning to turn against it. But those for whom austerity provides a powerful sense of rational order, a coherent narrative that makes constancy out of instability, and an economic purpose with the allure of morality, are unwilling to abandon it. </p>
<p>The narrative of austerity resonates strongly because of its history. We now require a powerful counter-narrative to promote the positive benefits of investing in public services and communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Macmillan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Historically, there have been numerous cultural manifestations of austerity that shed light on its enduring appeal.Sarah Macmillan, Teaching Fellow in Medieval Literature, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/617172016-07-06T01:05:00Z2016-07-06T01:05:00ZWhy are people starting to believe in UFOs again?<p>The 1990s were a high-water mark for public interest in UFOs and alien abduction. Shows like “The X-Files” and Fox’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_autopsy">“alien autopsy” hoax</a> were prime-time events, while MIT <a href="http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1158.htm">even hosted an academic conference</a> on the abduction phenomenon. </p>
<p>But in the first decade of the 21st century, interest in UFOs began to wane. <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-have-we-stopped-seeing-ufos-in-the-skies">Fewer sightings were reported</a>, and established amateur research groups like the <a href="https://business.highbeam.com/5799/article-1G1-76881163/lack-ufos-shuts-down-british-flying-saucer-bureau">British Flying Saucer Bureau</a> disbanded.</p>
<p>In 2006 historian Ben Macintyre suggested in <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/benmacintyre/article2044933.ece">The Times</a> that the internet had “chased off” the UFOs. The web’s free-flowing, easy exchange of ideas and information had allowed UFO skeptics to prevail, and, to Macintyre, people were no longer seeing UFOs because they no longer believed in them.</p>
<p>Data seemed to back up Macintyre’s argument that, when it came to belief in UFOs, reason was winning out. <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/4483/americans-belief-psychic-paranormal-phenomena-over-last-decade.aspx">A 1990 Gallup poll</a> found that 27 percent of Americans believed “extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth at some time in the past.” That number rose to 33 percent in 2001, before dropping back to 24 percent in 2005.</p>
<p>But now “The X-Files” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/arts/television/the-x-files-season-10-finale.html">is back</a>, and Hillary Clinton <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/us/politics/hillary-clinton-aliens.html?_r=0">has even pledged</a> to disclose what the government knows about aliens if elected president. Meanwhile, <a href="http://https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/06/11/why-alien-abductions-are-down-dramatically/qQ3zdBIc2tLAf3LVms8GLP/story.html">a recent Boston Globe article</a> by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie suggests that belief in UFOs may be <em>growing</em>. </p>
<p>She points to a 2015 <a href="http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=6902">Ipsos poll</a>, which reported that 45 percent of Americans believe extraterrestrials have visited the Earth. </p>
<p>So much for reason.</p>
<p>Why does Western society continue to be fascinated with the paranormal? If science doesn’t automatically kill belief in UFOs, why do reports of UFOs and alien abductions go in and out of fashion? </p>
<p>To some extent, this is political. Even though government agents like “Men in Black” may be the stuff of folklore, powerful people and institutions can influence the level of stigma surrounding these topics.</p>
<p>Sociologists of religion have also suggested that skepticism is countered by a different societal trend, something they’ve dubbed “re-enchantment.” They argue that while science can temporarily suppress belief in mysterious forces, these beliefs will always return – that the need to believe is ingrained in the human psyche. </p>
<h2>A new mythology</h2>
<p>The narrative of triumphant reason dates back, at least, to German sociologist Max Weber’s 1918 speech <a href="http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber-Science-as-a-Vocation.pdf">“Science as a Vocation,”</a> in which he argued that the modern world takes for granted that everything is reducible to scientific explanations.</p>
<p>“The world,” he declared, “is disenchanted.”</p>
<p>As with many inexplicable events, UFOs were initially treated as an important topic of scientific inquiry. The public wondered what was going on; scientists studied the issue and then “demystified” the topic.</p>
<p>Modern UFOlogy – the study of UFOs – is typically dated to a sighting made by a pilot named <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/kenneth-arnold">Kenneth Arnold</a>. While flying over Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947, Arnold described nine disk-like objects that the media dubbed “flying saucers.” </p>
<p>A few weeks later the Roswell Daily Register reported that the military had recovered a <a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/59331/roswell-ufo-crash-what-really-happened-67-years-ago">crashed flying saucer</a>. By the end of 1947, Americans had reported an additional 850 sightings. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The front page of the July 6, 1947, edition of the Roswell Daily Record.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/RoswellDailyRecordJuly8,1947.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the 1950s, people started reporting that they’d made contact with the inhabitants of these craft. Frequently, the encounters were erotic. </p>
<p>For example, one of the first “abductees” was a mechanic from California named Truman Bethurum. Bethurum was taken aboard a spaceship from Planet Clarion, which he said was captained by a beautiful woman named <a href="http://www.theironskeptic.com/articles/clarion/clarion.htm">Aura Rhanes</a>. (Bethurum’s wife eventually divorced him, citing his obsession with Rhanes.) In 1957, Antonio Villas-Boas of Brazil reported a similar encounter in which he was taken aboard a ship and forced to breed with a female alien. </p>
<p>Psychologists and sociologists proposed a few theories about the phenomenon. In 1957, psychoanalyst <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/carl_jungs_1957_letter_on_the_fascinating_modern_myth_of_ufos.html">Carl Jung</a> theorized that UFOs served a mythological function that helped 20th-century people adapt to the stresses of the Cold War. (For Jung, this did not preclude the possibility that UFOs might be real.)</p>
<p>Furthermore, American social mores were rapidly changing in the mid-20th century, especially around issues of race, gender and sexuality. <a href="http://www.baylorpress.com/Book/266/Monsters_in_America.html">According to historian W. Scott Poole</a>, stories of sex with aliens could have been a way of processing and talking about these changes. For example, when the Supreme Court finally declared laws banning interracial marriage unconstitutional in <a href="https://www.aclu.org/loving-v-virginia-case-over-interracial-marriage">1967</a>, the country had already been talking for years about <a href="http://www.ufocasebook.com/Hill.html">Betty and Barney Hill</a>, an interracial couple who claimed to have been probed by aliens.</p>
<p>Contactee lore also started applying “scientific ideas” as a way to repackage some of the mysterious forces associated with traditional religions. Folklore expert <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004DULQJC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#nav-subnav">Daniel Wojcik</a> has termed belief in benevolent space aliens as “techno-millennarianism.” Instead of God, some UFO believers think forms of alien technology will be what redeems the world. <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/9781479881062/">Heaven’s Gate</a> – whose members famously committed mass suicide in 1995 – was one of several religious groups awaiting the arrival of the aliens.</p>
<h2>You’re not supposed to talk about it</h2>
<p>Despite some dubious stories from contactees, the Air Force took UFO sightings seriously, organizing a series of studies, including <a href="http://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.html">Project Blue Book</a>, which ran from 1952 to 1969.</p>
<p>In 1966, the Air Force tapped a team of University of Colorado scientists headed by physicist Edward Condon to investigate reports of UFOs. Even though the team failed to identify 30 percent of the 91 sightings it examined, its 1968 report concluded that it wouldn’t be useful to continue studying the phenomenon. Condon added that schoolteachers who allowed their students to read UFO-related books for classroom credit were doing a grave disservice to the students’ critical faculties and ability to think scientifically. </p>
<p>Basing its decision off the report, the Air Force terminated Project Blue Book, and Congress ended all funding for UFO research. </p>
<p>As religion scholar Darryl Caterine explained in his book “<a href="http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A3296C">Haunted Ground,”</a> “With civil rights riots, hippie lovefests and antiwar protests raging throughout the nation, Washington gave its official support to a rational universe.”</p>
<p>While people still believed in UFOs, expressing too much interest in the subject now came with a price. In 2010, sociologists Christopher D. Bader, F. Carson Mencken and Joseph O. Baker <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/9780814791356/">found</a> that 69 percent of Americans reported belief in at least one paranormal subject (astrology, ghosts, UFOs, etc.). </p>
<p>But their findings also suggested that the more status and social connections someone has, the less likely he or she is to report paranormal belief. Single people report more paranormal beliefs than married people, and those with low incomes report more paranormal belief than those with high incomes. It may be that people with “something to lose” have reason not to believe in the paranormal (or at least not to talk about it).</p>
<p>In 1973, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics surveyed its membership about UFOs. Several scientists reported that they had seen unidentified objects and a few even answered that UFOs are extraterrestrial or at least “real.” However, physicist Peter A. Sturrock suggested that scientists felt comfortable answering these questions <a href="http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc592.htm">only because their anonymity was guaranteed</a>.</p>
<p>Harvard psychiatrist John Mack came to symbolize the stigma of UFO research. Mack worked closely with abductees, whom he dubbed “experiencers.” While he remained cagey about whether aliens actually existed, he advocated for the experiencers and argued that their stories should be taken seriously. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pb1GK87ME58?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">John Mack’s appearance on ‘Oprah.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His bosses weren’t happy. In 1994, Harvard Medical School <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/04/us/harvard-investigates-a-professor-who-wrote-of-space-aliens.html">opened an investigation</a> into his research – an unprecedented action against a tenured professor. In the end, Harvard dropped the case and affirmed Mack’s academic freedom. But the message was clear: Being open-minded about aliens was bad for one’s career.</p>
<h2>Reason and re-enchantment</h2>
<p>So if Hillary Clinton is running for president, why is she talking about UFOs? </p>
<p>Part of the answer may be that the Clintons have <a href="http://https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/08/the-long-strange-history-of-john-podestas-space-alien-obsession/">ties to a network</a> of influential people who have lobbied the government to disclose the truth about UFOs. This includes the late millionaire Laurence Rockefeller (who funded John Mack’s research) and John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s campaign and a long-time disclosure advocate.</p>
<p>But there may also be a broader cultural cycle at work. Sociologists such as Christopher Partridge <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-re-enchantment-of-the-west-9780567108944/">have suggested</a> that disenchantment leads to re-enchantment. While secularization may <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/13/a-closer-look-at-americas-rapidly-growing-religious-nones/">have weakened the influence of traditional churches</a>, this doesn’t mean that people have become disenchanted skeptics. Instead, many have explored alternate spiritualities that churches had previously stigmatized as “superstitions” (everything from holistic healing to Mayan prophecies). The rise of scientific authority may have paradoxically paved the way for UFO mythology.</p>
<p>A similar change may be happening in the political sphere where the language of critical thinking has been turned against the scientific establishment. In the 1960s, Congress deferred to the Condon Report. Today, conservative politicians regularly challenge ideas like climate change, evolution and the efficacy of vaccines. These dissenters never frame their claims as “anti-science” but rather as courageous examples of free inquiry. </p>
<p>Donald Trump may have been the first candidate to discover that weird ideas <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/06/30/some-they-sound-crazy-but-trump-conspiracy-theories-resonate-with-wide-swath-public/7HFzyTzJAio6vn0QGGcTdO/story.html">are now an asset instead of a liability</a>. In a political climate where the language of reason is used to attack the authority of science, musing over the possibility of UFOs simply doesn’t carry the stigma that it used to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61717/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph P. Laycock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whether it’s Hillary Clinton’s courting the UFO vote or Donald Trump’s lending credibility to various conspiracy theories, the “triumph of reason” seems to have gone by the wayside.Joseph P. Laycock, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Texas State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/416752015-05-14T03:09:12Z2015-05-14T03:09:12ZBeware secular fundamentalism: we need to be open to religion’s role in a troubled world<p>For many years, there has been much talk about the fall of religions as a result of enlightenment and modernity, leading to “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=lIb69vVaQRUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=disenchantment+Max+Weber+&ots=sT3BOq_WoQ&sig=YC-pGbnnkO_ta2VdNfPyjk6XVu4#v=snippet&q=disenchantment&f=false">disenchantment</a>” as Max Weber argued. Some extreme movements even <a href="http://victimsofcommunism.org/the-war-on-religion/">sought to eliminate religion</a> completely.</p>
<p>But religions are still alive and strong. They have a wide and deep influence on the public sphere. </p>
<p>Does that present a threat to secularism? Is religion part of the problem in the rise of extremism globally, or can it be part of the solution? </p>
<p>This is not an advocacy of the religious state in all its forms; rather, it is an attempt to understand how sufficient is the globally dominant Western secularism. It is a critique of particular forms of adjustment of the separation between religiosity and politics. </p>
<h2>Is religion to blame for extremism?</h2>
<p>In the modern era, it is very common to attack religion as a problem-maker. We see this following any violent incident in any part of the world where religion is merely one factor among many others in the violence.</p>
<p>This shows that ideas about secularism (at least in the Western context) have gone beyond the formal separation of state and religion. This has evolved to the level of what Charles Taylor calls “<a href="http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5233S.pdf">the condition of belief</a>”: there is a clear emphasis on the necessity of disappearance of God and religion combined with a strong rejection of religious involvement in public activities.</p>
<p>This “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4401460?uid=3737536&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21106360227061">ethical secularism</a>”, as Rajeev Bhargava puts it, regards religion as merely a disease in the public sphere, which should be forced to retreat to a very secluded part of the private life. It leaves no space for acknowledging the strong potential of spirituality and religion in conflict resolution and peacemaking.</p>
<p>Ethical secularism as an ideology has the potential for being radicalised itself by privileging secular humanism, exclusive humanism or atheism over religions. The unfairness of favouring one part of society over others and the potential for radical secularism point to the need for a moderate version of secularism. </p>
<p>From this perspective, the correlation between religion and extremism would be understood differently, as radical secularism produces extremism as well. This is <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0811/The-dangers-of-secularism-in-the-Middle-East">the case in the Middle East</a>, for instance. The forcible imposition of the secular nation-state upon the Muslim world led to not just despotism, suppression and massacres in the last century, but also paved the way for Islamic fundamentalism to come to the surface at the expense of moderates. </p>
<p>Secularism as a critique of religious hegemony must not just be a “mechanical repetition of violence-enacting critique, but rather the manifestation of critique as a receptivity-enacting, possibility-disclosing practice” as <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FQTrBgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA184&dq=mechanical+repetition+of+violence-enacting+critique,+but+rather+the+manifestation+of+critique&ots=lTbuU8F4C_&sig=83zwCw-wwMEb1NFKcGuwvuMBeFg#v=onepage&q=mechanical%20repetition%20of%20violence-enacting%20critique%2C%20but%20rather%20the%20manifestation%20of%20critique&f=false">Nikolas Kompridis</a> argues. Secularism as a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=aKenKtONX2MC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">system of “mediation”</a>, using Abdullahi An-Naim’s description, must promote compromise between religious and non-religious groups, rather than prioritising or privileging a non-religious lifestyle. </p>
<p>Another issue with blaming religion is that a distinction needs to be made between religion as an abstract phenomenon and the actions of specific adherents. Religion, secularism, atheism and other such concepts need to be viewed through an agency. Consequently, a particular religious institute, a specific secular state or a certain religious or non-religious conduct can usefully be discussed. </p>
<p>Religion is a far more complex entity, with a broad variety of interpretations. It is not necessarily tyrannical or oppressive by nature. </p>
<h2>Religion has a proven record of peacemaking</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81517/original/image-20150513-32313-1bvl1zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81517/original/image-20150513-32313-1bvl1zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81517/original/image-20150513-32313-1bvl1zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81517/original/image-20150513-32313-1bvl1zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81517/original/image-20150513-32313-1bvl1zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81517/original/image-20150513-32313-1bvl1zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81517/original/image-20150513-32313-1bvl1zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ayatollah Sistani has been a highly influential, calming presence in Iraq.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Religions with a long history of traditions, wisdom and spiritual experience have a very big potential to be a part of the solution, not the problem. According to the <a href="http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PWJan2006.pdf">Institute of Peace</a>, religious or faith-based peacemaking “is becoming much more common, and the number of cases cited is growing at an increasing pace”. </p>
<p>Some faith-based peacemaking has successfully averted civil war. As an instance, the Christian-rooted <a href="http://www.santegidio.org/index.php?idLng=1064">Community of Sant’Egidio</a> in its 50-year history has contributed to many cases of peacemaking. With 70,000 active volunteers of various religions in more than 70 countries, it has vast experience in conflict resolution and in promoting peace worldwide.</p>
<p>The community has contributed to peace negotiations in <a href="https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/12948">Algeria, Mozambique</a>, the <a href="http://www.italianinsider.it/?q=node/2124">Philippines</a> and <a href="http://www.state.gov/j/cso/releases/other/2014/234381.htm">elsewhere</a>. It recently hosted two dialogue meetings between high-ranking <a href="https://medium.com/@alimamouri/sunni-shiite-scholars-gather-in-rome-to-fight-extremism-in-iraq-9ea19f698922">Shiite and Sunni</a> leaders in Iraq, and <a href="https://medium.com/@alimamouri/the-vatican-oversees-shiite-catholic-meeting-to-confront-global-challenges-8d5b275481a4">Shiite and Catholic</a> religious leaders to confront global challenges in terms of extremism and conflicts.</p>
<p>In another example, the Muslim-Shiite cleric <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/colinfreeman/100262048/forget-obama-and-the-eu-the-man-who-should-really-have-the-nobel-peace-prize-is-an-obscure-iraqi-cleric/">Ayatollah Sistani</a> has had a prominent role in countering religious extremism and promoting forgiveness and peace. He has acted wisely during Iraq’s occupation and sectarian strife; his presence has helped avoid even worse humanitarian catastrophes. He never asked for an “Islamic state”; rather, he calls for a democratic civil state in Iraq. </p>
<p>The religious contribution to peacemaking and resolution of various social issues must be recognised and encouraged, instead of simplistically blaming religions and pushing them out of the public sphere based on an extreme understanding of secularism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ali Mamouri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are religious and non-religious extremists and we should not confuse violent believers with religion itself, which has a long history of peacemaking.Ali Mamouri, PhD Candidate at the Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/396462015-04-09T03:38:27Z2015-04-09T03:38:27ZBreaking up is hard to do: how the ALP can differ from the Greens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76841/original/image-20150401-31268-149r3np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Since its 2010-13 'partnership' with the Greens, any failure by Labor to mark its independence has been punished by the electorate.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s both heartening and perplexing to <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/nsw-election-2015-greens-cancer-eats-labors-roots-branches/story-fnsgbndb-1227285389466">read in the press</a> about the ALP’s increasing determination, in the wake of the NSW election <a href="https://theconversation.com/nsw-coalition-wins-a-thumping-victory-despite-a-swing-against-it-39472">result</a>, to make clear to voters that Labor is not allied to the Greens. </p>
<p>It’s heartening because it has become obvious since its 2010-13 <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-09-01/greens-labor-seal-deal/966044">“fling”</a> with the Greens that the electorate will punish any failure by Labor to mark its independence. More than that, it’s heartening because a political party that isn’t sure what it stands for isn’t really a party.</p>
<p>It’s perplexing, on the other hand, because there seems to be considerable uncertainty within the party about where to look to find an independent progressive direction that can win elections. Has the current generation of Labor thinkers forgotten the names Bob Hawke and Paul Keating? Surely not.</p>
<p>These two leaders knew what to do with all three letters in “ALP”: a strong and confident Australia, a strong and confident workforce, and a strong and confident party. This was and remains widely attractive.</p>
<p>They strove for a strong and progressive Australian society, one that treated workers and employers as equally important. They convinced a majority of Australians that progress towards a stronger, fairer society would necessarily include a stronger, fairer economy – even if it entailed privatisation of some industries and assets. For them, a strong Australia was to be fully engaged in the world.</p>
<p>Their position might well be summed up in the following quote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A progressive … [society was] the necessary corollary of a successful world policy … It was essential to win the workers’ positive cooperation with the government … [What was needed was] a progressive … policy based upon self-determination and self-responsibility … [This] could have sense only if it placed the workers in an economic and social take-off position so that they could compete economically and socially with the corporate leadership.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As it happens, this is a quote from a book by Wolfgang Mommsen called <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo5969895.html">Max Weber and German Politics, 1890-1920</a>. Weber is better known now as a founder of sociology, but his sociology was built upon his deep understanding of politics.</p>
<p>Strange as it may sound, Hawke, Keating and Weber are on the same page when it comes to strengthening a progressive political party.</p>
<p>Weber is widely admired for stressing the importance to any society of its culture – its roots in its languages, its peoples and its land. But what is usually ignored is the extent to which he believed that society and culture can flourish only when the economy is strong, which in turn can flourish only when the nation is politically and militarily strong.</p>
<p>It is not too difficult to turn this somewhat unlikely Hawke-Keating-Weber approach into three steps the ALP might take if the party is to find its way out of the predicament it has dug itself into.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76842/original/image-20150401-31282-1oxz2ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76842/original/image-20150401-31282-1oxz2ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76842/original/image-20150401-31282-1oxz2ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76842/original/image-20150401-31282-1oxz2ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76842/original/image-20150401-31282-1oxz2ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76842/original/image-20150401-31282-1oxz2ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76842/original/image-20150401-31282-1oxz2ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76842/original/image-20150401-31282-1oxz2ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Keating strove for a strong and progressive Australian society.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/NAA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>First step: do not shy away from a Hawke-Keating-type determination to base Australia’s economic strength on the belief that capital and labour are more often than not on the same side. Labour gains when capital gains, so much so that labour should not be afraid to contribute to and control an independent supply of capital – as it is doing through superannuation, for example.</p>
<p>Second step: speak with confidence about Australia as a nation and do not stoop to opposing just for the sake of opposing. This doesn’t look like strength and confidence; it looks like petty schoolyard squabbling. </p>
<p>If the ALP really does think the electorate wants them to “get even” with Tony Abbott for his relentless negativity as opposition leader, then all hope is lost. The electorate has never been interested in punishing an opposition leader simply for leading the opposition.</p>
<p>Third, in formulating its suite of policies, there is no need to artificially distance the ALP from all objectives that the Greens promote. The ALP is, without doubt, genuine about the need to protect the environment, the need to find the best possible ways to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions and so on.</p>
<p>What distinguishes the ALP from the Greens is not the absence of a commitment to the environment. Instead, it is the presence of a commitment to the environment within the context of maintaining Australia’s political, military and economic strength on behalf of all citizens. This is an approach not shared by the Greens.</p>
<p>The Hawke-Keating features of the ALP discussed here – which happen also to be features of Weber’s thinking about how a progressive party should behave – seemed in the 1980s and early 90s to be features that would make the party the dominant centrist party of government for much of the 21st century. It still could be.</p>
<p>Despite the <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/paul-kellys-book-triumph-and-demise-dissects-labor-and-national-crisis/story-fn9n8gph-1227062575051">lost opportunity</a> of the 2007-13 period (a loss in part caused by the global financial crisis and in part self-inflicted), this legacy is still sitting there waiting for the ALP to take it up in full.</p>
<p>But the other side of this coin is that the legacy is still there to be selectively diluted, which seems to be the ALP’s wont at present. If this continues it will be a great shame – not just for the ALP but for Australia as a whole.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39646/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gary Wickham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A political party that isn’t sure what it stands for isn’t really a party.Gary Wickham, Emeritus Professor, School of Arts, Murdoch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/139572013-09-13T04:52:04Z2013-09-13T04:52:04ZO, what a tangled Weber we weave with unemployment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31134/original/qdvzmz52-1378862729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Unemployment has higher psychic costs for workers who identify with the Protestant work ethic.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image sourced from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently released labour force figures have shown a rise in unemployment figures to 5.8% and, with Treasury’s budget update slating a rise to 6.25% by the end of the financial year, the future doesn’t look bright for many Australians. </p>
<p>Previous studies have shown that such unemployment has high psychic costs - or loss in quality of life and increased stress. However, our recent research illustrates that the impact on individuals and society may be more complex than previously thought, with religion playing a role in relative levels of well-being loss. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268113000838">Our study</a>, published in July in the <em>Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization</em>, examined 82 countries, including Australia. It found that the psychic costs of unemployment may be higher for some religious denominations than others, with Protestants suffering the most.</p>
<p>Moreover, the effect of religious differences was even more pronounced at the societal level, with people from predominantly Protestant societies hurting much more than those people from other societies, when they didn’t have a job. </p>
<p>The study classified Australia as a Protestant country, alongside Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, the UK,and the US.</p>
<h2>How does religion affect economic attitudes and outlook?</h2>
<p>The question is as relevant now as it was more than a century ago. </p>
<p>At that time, Max Weber pioneered the idea that culture and religious teachings may hold the key to understanding how the Western world developed its capitalist economic system. </p>
<p>Weber, one of the founding fathers of modern sociology, draws attention to the <a href="http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/1095/The%20Protestant%20Ethic%20and%20the%20Spirit%20of%20Capitalism.pdf">ascetic ethical system</a> propagated in specific sub-denominations of Protestantism, namely Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism and Baptism. </p>
<p>He found that these religious traditions have been instrumental in promoting the idea that worldly activity can be a means for individuals to prove their faith, which eventually evolved into “spirit of capitalism”: the belief that working for a profit is a moral good in itself.</p>
<p>More than a century since Weber’s writing, his thinking on the cultural roots of modern economic institutions appears to have made a comeback in social science. </p>
<p>At the same time, evidence on Weber’s original thesis on a specific Protestant work ethic remains ambiguous and relies on questionable measures of work ethic.</p>
<p>A wholly different approach, overcoming earlier problems, is to examine what makes people (Protestants and non-Protestants) happy and derive a measure of the intrinsic appreciation of work. </p>
<h2>Weber and a new approach</h2>
<p>This is what we did in our study, where we examined data on almost 150,000 individuals from 82 countries and considered religious variation in the extent to which work makes people happy and unemployment hurts people’s well-being.</p>
<p>We then took Weber’s Protestant work ethic thesis to suggest two possible hypotheses. </p>
<p>The first hypothesis was that unemployment (relative to having a job) affected the well-being of individual Protestants more than the well-being of individuals with other denominations. </p>
<p>This reflects the most common interpretation of the Weber thesis; that Protestant individuals will have a stronger work ethic than individuals that are holding different religious beliefs.</p>
<p>However, it occurred to us that Weber’s argument does not so much focus on individuals and Protestantism in the present, as it does on a Protestant ethic that has evolved into a rational, secular “spirit of capitalism”. </p>
<p>Our second hypothesis therefore emphasised the idea of a work ethic pervading a whole society. It postulated that unemployment (relative to having a job) affects the well-being of people from historically Protestant societies more than it affects the well-being of people from other societies.</p>
<h2>The way we work</h2>
<p>Both these hypotheses were confirmed in our empirical analysis. </p>
<p>Not having a job is universally bad for people’s happiness, regardless of religious denomination, but it hurts the well-being of Protestants about 40% more, even with several factors such as income and health controlled for. </p>
<p>Religious differences in the psychic costs of unemployment were even more pronounced at the societal level. People from Protestant societies are hurt more than twice as much by not having a job, than those from other societies. </p>
<p>In fact, when testing the effect of individual Protestantism and societal Protestantism simultaneously, the societal-level effect dominated. </p>
<p>More than a century later, we have a clear confirmation of Weber’s original thesis, even in contemporary data.</p>
<p>Beyond providing the most comprehensive evidence on the Weber thesis to date, our study also makes an important methodological contribution. </p>
<p>As interest in the role of culture, socio-economic outcomes and developments increases, we also need to improve methods of measuring differences in cultural values between societies and groups of people. </p>
<p>Our method can be used to measure systematic cross-cultural differences in a range of issues, posing a most welcome contribution to the methodological toolkit of empirical social scientists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/13957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>No conflicts.</span></em></p>Recently released labour force figures have shown a rise in unemployment figures to 5.8% and, with Treasury’s budget update slating a rise to 6.25% by the end of the financial year, the future doesn’t…Andre van Hoorn, Assistant professor, University of GroningenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.