Religious Fundamentalism

Global, Local and Personal

Peter Herriot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781134101603
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

How does a religious fundamentalist come to embrace a counter-cultural world view?

Fundamentalism can be analysed from a variety of perspectives. It is a type of belief system which enables individuals to make sense of their lives and provides them with an identity. It is a social phenomenon, in which strictly religious people act according to the norms, values, and beliefs of the group to which they belong. It is a cultural product, in the sense that different cultural settings result in different forms of fundamentalism. And it is a global phenomenon, in the obvious sense that it is to be found everywhere, and also because it is both a reaction against, and also a part of, the globalising modern world.

Religious Fundamentalism deals with all of these four levels of analysis, uniquely combining sociological and psychological perspectives, and relating them to each other. Each chapter is followed by a lengthy case study, and these range from a close textual analysis of George W. Bush's second inaugural speech through to a treatment of Al-Qaida as a global media event.

This book provides a comprehensive social scientific perspective on a subject of immense contemporary significance, and should be of use both to university students and also to students of the contemporary world.

1 Fundamentalism is global

Modernisation

A selective enemy

The most basic characteristic of fundamentalism is that it is reactionary. Its basic stance is oppositional, as it is always hostile to an Other, whom it perceives as threatening. Moreover, it defines itself by that opposition; it depends upon the Other’s existence for its own raison d’étre.

But who or what is the Other? At different times, and in different places, fundamentalists have come up with a variety of enemies. We should pay careful attention to this choice of enemy, whether it be the Great Satan, religious apostates, the New World Order, the feminist movement, or secular humanism, to name but five out of many. For fundamentalists’ own statements about whom or what they are fighting are an important source of evidence for what it is that they are reacting against, and why. However, while we should listen to what fundamentalists say, and respect it as an honest statement of what they think and feel, we should not adopt their account as an explanation. We have to search for the origins of their reactionary fervour within our own understanding of its social and psychological context.

That context is the modernising world. The term ‘modernising’ implies an ongoing process, which has reached different stages in different nations and cultures. Some are still even now essentially feudal in nature. Others are in the early-modern stage, being engaged in the initial process of industrialisation. Many have reached the turbulent stage of late modernity, characterised by their involvement in, and acceptance of, globalisation. However, it does not necessarily follow that those societies currently in a feudal or early-modern condition will follow the same course of change as those now termed ‘late modern’. The history of the West is not necessarily the destiny of the world. Their future is not already determined for them.

The use of the term ‘modernising’ also indicates a stance on an issue that has preoccupied many sociologists for some time: whether recent changes are so radical that the world has become a qualitatively different place as a result (Bauman, 1987, 1992). The use of the term ‘postmodern’ expresses a belief that nothing less than a revolution has occurred in our institutions, cultures, and consciousness. Such arguments may be partly a matter of semantics. However, I have chosen to use ‘modernisation’ as a label for the entire process because I wish to emphasise the way in which early features of modernity are at the root of its latest manifestation in globalisation (Habermas, 1987). The seeds of globalisation were sown in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is nevertheless unarguably true that modernisation is rapidly increasing in pace, having acquired the characteristics of a positive feedback system (Castells, 1996).

It is useful to adopt three different levels of analysis when seeking to understand modernisation; these are institutional and technical, cultural and world-view, and the level of the self. All three levels, however, are dynamically inter-related. For example, changes in world-view both inform and are shaped by changes at the institutional and technical level. Thus modern people tend to play down a supernatural world-view because of the capacity of modern human institutions to explain, and to a considerable extent control, the natural world.

To return to our initial question of what it is that fundamentalists are reacting against, one answer might be ‘the process of modernisation’ or ‘the modern world’. Popular commentary sometimes argues that fundamentalists seek to return the world to the middle ages, if not earlier. However, this broad response immediately requires qualification. There are many features of modernisation that fundamentalists positively embrace, despite their repeated re-affirmation of ancient tradition. Some of these features they have adopted consciously, and others perhaps unawares. For example, Protestant Christian fundamentalists try to apply modern scientific and historical truth criteria to the Bible (Armstrong, 2000a). They are also experts at using the modern political process. Fundamentalists in general are second to none in their

Table 1 Features of modernisation

skilful use of communication technologies. As I will demonstrate in the following case study, al-Qaida are consummate exploiters of the global media. In the light of such selectivity, we should therefore be asking: Which features of modernity are they opposing, and why?

The modernisation of institutions

Early modernity

The early development of capitalism and its embrace of the profit motive were closely related to industrialisation and manufacture. This in turn both stimulated and was formed by technologies that were derived ultimately from developing scientific knowledge. The increased cheapness and availability of energy was a major driver. Early industrialists emphasised the rationalised division of work into manageable units: ‘scientific management’ as Frederick Winthrop Taylor (1911) termed it. Technological systems and processes rapidly superseded craft knowledge, and roles within organisations became more and more specialised. According to Weber (1947), roles were depersonalised and bureaucratised, so that anyone with the appropriate training and aptitude could fill them. The job, rather than the person, became the key element of organisation.

Organisations themselves became more and more specialised, both in the public and private sectors. Whereas in pre-modern times the church had assumed responsibility for a wide range of services and governance, now institutions or organisations competed for control over the provision of each. The Reformation was a stimulus for this decline in the institutional church’s authority, since it encouraged individuals and social classes to develop a variety of religious structures to suit their needs. A wide range of Protestant denominations resulted.

The dominant operational mode became one of establishing the best means of achieving specified objectives; and observing, and if possible measuring, outcomes to check that they had indeed been achieved. This essentially instrumental and pragmatic approach did not encourage questions regarding the value of objectives. Furthermore, it paid little attention to other outcomes than those intended. Thus the migration from the country to the city, and the development of class structures based on occupation and ownership, caused (and continue to cause) apparently unforeseen societal conflict and individual problems. The only too visible inequalities that resulted created (and still create) a sense of injustice and the demand for rights. So powerful are these responses to modernisation that two countervailing ideologies have already been spawned, both of which have convulsed the world: fascism and communism.

Of course, feudal society had also been grossly unequal. However, feudal institutions and the social order were seldom questioned. It was simply assumed that they were the natural state of affairs, ordained by God. The new capacity of institutions to reflect upon themselves, and to re-design and improve themselves as a consequence, was a direct outcome of the rational approach to the world that was the product of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. It was to become one of the major drivers of modernisation.

Globalisation defined

Indeed, so effective and powerful have modern institutions and organisations become that they presently dominate the modern world. One prominent account (Rugman, 2000) of globalisation describes it largely in terms of the increased power and reach of multinational corporations. The power of capital relative to that of other institutions, such as nation states and organised labour, has increased immensely.

Before we consider the impact of globalisation, however, we should try and define it. Globalisation is characterised by a huge increase in the world’s wealth, achieved by capital reproducing itself through investment (Reich, 1991). Much of this consists of foreign direct investment, with multinational corporations and investment funds seizing opportunities for profit across the world. This creation of wealth has been driven by the essential feature of globalisation: the new-found mobility of capital, labour, and information. It is primarily information technology that has made such mobility possible. And it is the mobility of capital, in the form of financial instruments, investment capital, and currency speculation, which creates not only opportunities for wealth creation, but also uncertainty for national economies and corporations. Indeed, even the global economy itself can feel threatened by capital flows.

The centrality of information technology to the process of globalisation cannot be exaggerated (Castells, 1996). It is pervasive because every organisational activity involves the use of information. Moreover, information technology permits the action of knowledge on other knowledge, creating a dynamic in favour of innovation. ‘What has changed’, argues Castells (1996, p. 92) ‘is not the kind of activities humankind is engaged on, but its technological ability to use as a direct productive force what distinguishes our species as a biological oddity: its superior capacity to process symbols’.

The global reach of capital, enabled by information technology, has by-passed nation states, which in early modernity were the most powerful institutions of the modern world (Ohmae, 1995). Investors can profoundly impact a national economy by removing their investment to another location that offers cheaper labour, less protection for labour, higher subsidies, and lower taxes. The power of the nation state has consequently been eroded. So has its legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens as the provider of social protection in fulfilment of the social contract between government and governed. National politics and politicians are discredited. Meanwhile, supranational organisations with an agenda of trade liberalisation, such as the World Trade Organization, succeed in influencing or even controlling national economic policies.

However, the notion that globalisation is by now all but complete is mistaken. The supposed triumph of political democracy and liberal economics has not resulted in ‘the end of history’, as Fukuyama (1992) predicted. Many governments protect their economies by tariffs on imports and by subsidies. These governments are not only those of poor nations being forced to liberalise. On the contrary, the rich nations, which are most vociferous in urging liberalisation on others, protect their own industries such as steel and agriculture (Greider, 1997). Moreover, groups of rapidly developing nations, such as Brazil, India, and China are organising themselves to resist what they perceive to be the imposition of a Western capitalist model in cultures and economies where it is inappropriate.

Mediated experience

Capital’s power and reach has expanded to the extent that the world is apparently becoming a global market. However, this expansion is balanced by a new emphasis on the local. As corporations and other institutions strive for competitive advantage in the global market place, they realise that unique features make certain regions or localities attractive to capital investment. Silicon Valley was the ideal cultural setting for the initial development of the information technology industry, while Bangalore currently provides a growing hub for the development of technological services.

This contrast between the global and the local is also exemplified in the global media. Ownership of the global media is concentrated in a relatively few giant media organisations, with the consequence that their products such as film, music, video, and news bulletins, which are often American in origin, are available world-wide. The possibility of a global mediated culture appears real (Robertson, 1992). Media products are marketed to a diverse and highly segmented market, and the opportunity to choose from among a customised portfolio of products is presented, giving the appearance of almost infinite choice. One of the consequences of this globalised marketing of media products is the blurring of distinctions between such modes of communication as information and entertainment; drama documentaries and ‘reality’ TV are examples.

However, local media outlets, such as talk radio, also flourish, expressing levels of populist discourse that national and international cultural elites would not countenance. Furthermore, the interactive nature of media such as the internet, together with their global reach, ensure that the big media corporations do not control their use and content, although they may be censored by certain governments (e.g. China). Virtual internet communities across national boundaries may develop, but they are usually ephemeral in nature, and there is no assurance that participants are who they say they are. Indeed, media experience for many consists of a world of make-believe. As Castells (1996, p. 373) puts it ‘appearances are not just on the screen through which experience is communicated, but they become the experience’: real virtuality rather than virtual reality.

If they are to prosper in the globalised world, institutions have to engage with the global media. They have to compete with other commodified products, such as entertainment, pornography, and sport, for consumers’ attention. In their efforts to do so, they run the risk of changing their nature. Religion and politics, for example, can easily become entertainment. The public domain now reveals the private and personalised; the distinction between ‘backstage’ and ‘frontstage’ becomes ever more difficult to maintain for anyone in the public eye. Social and cultural distinctions become blurred, as when middle-class British television presenters give the illusion of being ‘one of the people’ by affecting mock cockney (working-class London) accents.

The global corporation

Meanwhile the corporations at the cutting edge of globalisation have changed radically in recent years in their structure and in their organisation of work processes. In contrast with the machine-like bureaucracies typical of early modernity, with their predictability, functional divisional structures, and multiple levels of accountability, many late modern organisations are becoming hollowed out structures (Clarke & Clegg, 1998). At the top are senior managers and professionals, who are often global travellers on behalf of their employers. At the bottom are groups of employees engaged in those tasks that are not (yet) automated, such as call-centre staff or fast-food providers. These groups are often on temporary contracts, or work for a sub-contractor. Their employment often depends upon the retention of contracts, and they suffer from a chronic lack of employment protection.

The upper level of employees has seen its real income increase rapidly in the last decade or two, whereas the lower has frequently been rewarded at a rate little above the minimum legal wage (if one has been set). Undoubted increases in productivity have not resulted in major increases in wages for the mass of employees in the richer nations. Inequalities of wealth within late-modern societies have increased as a consequence, as has the social segregation of the wealthy from the rest in terms of location and lifestyle. Yet even the higher-level employees suffer from increased employment uncertainty. Corporate takeovers and mergers are more frequent, and the pressure to deliver shareholder value in the short term makes cutting costs by means of redundancies an attractive strategic option.

Rather than the traditional hierarchy, with its promotional structure and single lines of accountability, late-modern multinational organisations are becoming temporary networks of individual employees. Employees frequently associate virtually more than they do face-to-face, and it is the flow of information that determines the identity and nature of relationships between employees. Their work is often organised around projects, rather than jobs, with the consequence that relationships with colleagues, and indeed, the employment relationship itself, are temporary (Herriot, 2001).

Because of their increased power relative to that of labour and of the professions, both public and private sector organisations are able to demand more from their rank-and-file employees (Noon & Blyton, 1997). Many of them can wield the threat of re-locating the work to a country where wages are lower; others simply affirm that they will fail to survive unless they increase productivity and cut costs. As the work of their managers and professionals is of high value to organisations, and because they reward these employees handsomely, they feel able to demand ever more from them too. They want them to take initiatives and to seek responsibility. And as the work of their lower level employees often involves interaction with customers, they come to expect these people, usually women, to invest their selves fully in ‘emotional labour’ (Hochschild, 1983). ‘Have a good day’ is simply not good enough today. You have to really empathise with the customer.

Thus the recent increase in the pace of the modernisation process, which we term globalisation, is pervasive. It adds to the impetus of those various trends which were set in motion in early modernity:

• The power of capital is enhanced, but now at the expense of the nation state.
• Wealth is increased, but distributed unevenly within and between nations.
• The marketing of commoditised goods and services is ever more pervasive, as it spreads globally.
• Organisations and institutions are changing even more rapidly so as to meet the new global challenges that face them.
• The media are more available, and more and more of everyday experience is mediated rather than direct.

In sum, globalisation is the ultimate acceleration of the process of modernisation. All of these accelerated trends are reflected both in cultural perspectives and in individual selves.

The modernisation of culture and world-view

Humankind the master of its fate?

The relationship between institutional and cultural aspects of modernisation is just one more version of the chicken-and-egg dilemma. New ways of acting upon the natural and social worlds both depended upon, and also created, new ways of thinking about them. The continuing empirical discovery of causal relationships between means and ends naturally results in a preference for natural rather than supernatural explanations for events. If one believed that outcomes are determined by God, then the only way to achieve one’s objectives would be to pray in an effort to influence the Almighty. Given that rational efforts to achieve objectives appeared to work better than praying for them, the idea became popular that humankind, not God, was in charge of its own destiny.

Once again, we may attribute some of this change in world-view, at least in Europe, to the Reformation. For that great religious and cultural transformation demythologised the everyday life of medieval people, inhabited as it was by a whole range of saints and other spiritual beings, such as angels and demons. Instead, the Reformation located the one true God outside the everyday world, His people’s spiritual King enthroned in heavenly splendour. This theological distancing left believers free to investigate and seek to control the natural and social worlds (while still acknowledging the existence of the Almighty, their creator).

The control exercised by means of technological and organisational systems and processes enabled modern ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• 1 Fundamentalism is global
• 2 Cultures and fundamentalisms
• 3 Fundamentalisms as social movements
• 4 Fundamentalist organisations
• 5 Small groups and fundamentalisms
• 6 A central identity
• 7 Fundamentalist beliefs: Process and contents
• 8 Fundamentalist values and attitudes
• 9 Fundamentalist behaviour: Its effects on Them and Us
• 10 Fundamentalism is very different
• Bibliography