maklelan wrote:Doctor Scratch wrote:he's dismissive of exit counseling (which is viewed as legitimate in some disciplines--e.g., social work);
In the context of anti-cult and counter-cult movements, I don't know of any scholars who view deprogramming and exit counseling as legitimate.
Well, they probably wouldn't use that terminology. Plus, you can probably see how someone coming out of, say, the FLDS compounds would benefit from counseling.
Doctor Scratch wrote:he drew his sample set directly from an "anti-cult" organization.
He says he had two pools of participants, one drawn from the NRMs themselves and one drawn from lists provided by anti-cult groups. He points out the consistency of their attitudes is supported by the similar breakdown of their experiences.
Sorry, Mak, but I'm just not all that impressed by this. It would be like polling people at RfM and getting a list of apostates from the SCMC. Of course these people are going to be pissed off. Of course they're going to fit the researcher's expectations.
Doctor Scratch wrote:Basically, he suggests that exit narratives depend upon the "social location of the organization," and that less "legitimate" organizations tend to produce more hostile leave-takers.
"Legitimate" in the eyes of the apostates.
No... The intro on p. 5 says, "The way that disputed exits are organized and the narratives that are constructed about the process...is a function of the
social location of the organization" (emphasis mine). He goes on to classify the organizations in descending levels of "legitimacy": allegiant, contestant, and subversive. In the next paragraph he clarifies and says that he's using "subversive" here as something that is said specifically by the apostates. That doesn't mean, however, that other groups and/or individuals in the larger society don't also view the organization as "subversive" or illegitimate.
On pg. 12 he refers to "legitimacy" again when discussing the chapter on Christian Scientists, and again it's clear that he's talking about "legitimacy" in the eyes of the larger society, and not just apostates.
Doctor Scratch wrote:Based on his description of the different levels of legitimacy, I think that Mormonism would fit in the middle category, and in fact Bromley, on pg. 6, seems to be saying pretty much exactly that.
You appear to be confusing an objective judgment of legitimacy by the scholar with a description of the views of the groups' opponents and apostates. Also, he was not fitting Mormonism into his own model on p. 6, but describing Mauss' own framework. Mormonism isn't described as occupying any single particular spot so much as occupying different spots for different people over time.
On pg. 6: "The Mormon case is an unusually instructive one since Mormonism was deemed subversive in the last century and has moved toward an allegiant position in recent decades, but continues to occupy a contestant position in some social locations."
Do you really think that he's only talking about "apostates" in "the last century," and that the movement he's describing is applicable only in the eyes of apostates? It's pretty clear that he's not. These categories--contestant, allegiant--refer to the organization's status vis-a-vis the larger, hegemonic society.
Doctor Scratch wrote:You can't just attribute this entirely to the leave-takers, or to "anti-cult" groups. Sometimes the NRMs or "organizations" have real problems, and as Bromely appears to be saying, this can genuinely contribute to the anger and hostility.
I agree that organizations have problems, and Mormonism is not entirely passive in ex-members' exit narrative, but I don't see Bromley saying that in this particular publication.[/quote]
Well, no. I'm extrapolating based on the theoretical framework he lays out in the intro.
In fact, he states that the focus of the book is "the role of apostates in the controversy surrounding those contemporary new religious movements that are deemed 'subversive'" (5, emphasis mine). Can you provide a page number or a quote?
Yes: that is the focus, but in setting up the premises of the book, he also has something interesting to say about the relationship between the organizations and the larger society or "environment."
"[I]f, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14