A Matter of Choice: A Micro-Level Study on How Swedish New Agers Choose Their Religious Beliefs and Practices  

Oleh:

Brodin, Jenny-Ann

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Rationality and Society vol. 15 no. 3 (Agu. 2003), page 381-405.
Topik: New Age movement; rationality; religious choice; uncertainty
Fulltext: 381RS153.pdf (162.41KB)

Isi artikel

A necessary, but surprisingly neglected, postulate within economic and rational choice theories on religious phenomena is that religion is a matter of individual choice. But what does it actually mean to choose religion? Is it a choice similar to other choices ± or is it something rather different? In this article individual choices of religious beliefs and practices, both from theoretical and empirical points of view, are discussed. The empirical material consists of ten indepth interviews within one particular, and also rather special, religious ®eld ± namely the Swedish New Age movement. Some of the main ®ndings concern the respondents' strategies to estimate costs/ bene®ts and to reduce different kinds of uncertainty. In the interviews we ®nd an interesting duality. On the one hand there seems to be a highly individualized ideology, stressing individual responsibility and authority; on the other hand social contacts and recommendations seem to be of great importance.

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