Sociologists From Canada

"Kent’s problem is not that he critiques religion. The problem is how he does it. He constructs a sensational and simplistic narrative by privileging anecdote over evidence and ideology over nuance. He treats religious belief as pathology, ritual as camouflage, and dissent as proof. This is not sociology—it is polemic. And it has consequences. Kent’s theories have been used to justify surveillance of religious groups, to support prosecutions based on dubious evidence, and to stigmatize communities that deviate from [the] mainstream norms. His work has contributed to a climate of suspicion, where difference is equated with danger and belief with abuse. This is why revisiting the Satanism scare—and Kent’s role in it—is not merely an academic exercise. We must remember how easily fear can masquerade as scholarship, and how quickly ideology can distort inquiry. We must distinguish between critique and condemnation, between analysis and accusation."

"[Religiologist David] Frankfurter’s central objection is that Kent conflates mythic narratives with historical reality. … Kent’s theory of “deviant scripturalism” posits that fringe groups can use or misuse specific religious texts—particularly those involving incest, sacrifice, or divine violence—to justify abuse. But Frankfurter argues that this approach lacks historical grounding. Kent’s method, he counters, amounts to a kind of speculative anthropology, in which the mere presence of a mythic in scripture is taken as evidence of its enactment in ritual. This is not just a methodological quibble. It strikes at the heart of Kent’s argument. By treating scriptural motifs as behavioral templates, Kent blurs the line between text and practice, belief and action. Frankfurter points out that such motifs are ubiquitous in religious literature, yet rarely—if ever—translated into ritual abuse. Historical data do not support the leap from narrative to crime."

"Kent’s critics have long accused him of using anti-cultism as a tool to promote a broader hostility toward religion, and [his book Psychobiographies and Godly Visions: Disordered Minds and the Origins of Religiosity] reads like a spectacular confirmation. All religious leaders are painted with the same brush: deluded, dangerous, and diagnostically compromised. This worldview is so totalizing that it leaves no room for metaphor, [or for] mystery, or [for] the possibility that [the] spiritual experience might be more than just neurological noise."

"… [In his recent work, Kent] portrays several religions as breeding grounds for mental illness and abuse rather than multifaceted human phenomena. … To be clear, Kent is not a hoaxer like [French provocateur Léo] Taxil. He is a credentialed academic. But like Taxil, he operates in a space where ideology can overshadow evidence, and where the allure of uncovering hidden evil can distort the lens of inquiry. … Kent’s journey from sociologist to activist is a story worth telling, not because it is unique, but because it is emblematic of a broader tension between scholarship and sensationalism. After all, when the devil is in the details, the scholar must be doubly vigilant."

"Media reports on “cults” frequently show bias and hasty, inadequate research methods, and are shaped by a militant secularism that showcases a group’s weirdest beliefs without context or any explanatory framework. Many journalists openly declare their mandate to “unmask” the cults and their proto-criminal leaders. They will seek out apostates and whistleblowers who are dedicated to broadcasting the “bad news” about their former religion."

"New religions are like weeds in our garden. Society’s gardeners will attempt to pull out weeds to make room for cultured plants and familiar religions. However, some weeds may be cherished flowers in other lands, and those deemed “invasive” might be edible or have healing properties."

"I don't think that Quebec can afford a pastoral approach that chooses silence and accommodation at the expense of human life and human dignity. Being discrete hasn’t served Quebec Catholicism."

"Decisions must be made at any given time with wisdom and caution. But also, sometimes with courage and audacity."

"Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess, two of the influential urban sociologists from the famed "Chicago School," wrote in their book Introduction to the Science of Sociology:"

"The panopticon produces subjects with desires to improve their inner lives. In contrast the superpanopticon constitutes objects, individuals with dispersed identities, who may remain unaware of how those identities are construed by the computer. We are once again back with disappearing bodies."

"How long can surveillance theory ignore the implications of this? It seems entirely appropriate to add to the surveillance impetuses of the nation state, capitalism and bureaucracy, the imperatives of an implicit cultural commitment to omniperception. [...] The driving desire to dragnet yet more detailed data is both as old and as ominous as the aspiration to be "as God"."

"What persists into postmodern conditions is an abiding infrastructural dependence on communication and information technologies. They are undoubtedly viewed in the popular and political imaginations as far more beneficial than baleful to humanity. That they will continue to expand their influence is beyond doubt, short of some global catastrophe."

"Surveillance today is a means of sorting and classifying populations and not just of invading personal space or violating the privacy of individuals. In postmodernizing contexts surveillance is an increasingly powerful means of reinforcing social divisions, as the superpanoptic sort relentlessly screens, monitors and classifies to determine eligibility and access, to include and to exclude."

"David Lyon, Surveillance society: Monitoring everyday life, Open university press, 2001. ISBN 9780335205462"

"But the term surveillance society does have connotations that at least hint at possible negative consequences, in ways that unambiguously optimistic talk of "information societies" and "knowledge-based economies" does not. My point is rather that such societies are in part constituted by a surveillance dimension."

"Comint represents the effort to gain access to, intercept and process every important modern form of communication, in every significant sphere, and in many countries."

"What a contrast with the lives of ordinary people at the start of twenty-first century! Today, everyday life is constantly monitored."

"Renewed attention to institutions in political science over the past ten to fifteen years is a trend that has been widely recognized, discussed, and debated. This effort to emphasize the theoretical importance of institutions, succinctly expressed by slogans such as ‘bringing the state back in’ and ‘structuring politics’ typically is associated with a school that has come to be known as new institutionalism. New institutionalists have made the case for giving institutions analytical primacy, but substantial disagreements remain over how institutional analysis should be carried out."

"The task facing philosophy today is to examine its filiations to its most hallowed concepts and to consider anew their productivity. ... The result of this task might be to see old concepts as more productive than new ones, which suffer not merely from the fact that they are inevitably expressions of the general conditions of possibility of the present moment, but also because of the way in which the eternal production of the new is linked more strongly than ever to the basic drive of capitalism."

"The final dismantling of the great master narratives is itself a grand narrative—why else would people get so excited about it?"

"The Universal, in the name of which an oppressive particularity came to dominate the globe, suddenly seems the last bastion against a neoliberal world order that is happy enough to maintain differences ... as long as they are subsumed without resistance within the global market."

"Three grossly different types of stigma may be mentioned. First there are abominations of the body - the various physical deformities. Next there are blemishes of individual character perceived as weak will, domineering or unnatural passions, treacherous and rigid beliefs, and dishonesty, these being inferred from a known record of, for example, mental disorder, imprisonment, addiction, alcoholism, homosexuality, unemployment, suicidal attempts, and radical political behaviour. Finally there are the tribal stigma of race, nation, and religion, these being stigma that can be transmitted through lineages and equally contaminate all members of a family."

"In all these various instances of stigma [...] the same sociological features are found: an individual who might have been received easily in ordinary social intercourse possesses a trait that can obstrude itself upon attention and turn those of us whom he meets away from him, breaking the claim that his other attributes have on us. He possesses a stigma, an undesired differentness from what we had anticipated. We and those who do not depart negatively from the particular expectations at issue I shall call the normals. The attitude we normals have toward a person with a stigma, and the actions we take in regard to him, are well known, since these responses are what the benevolent social action is designed to soften and ameliorate. By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances. We construct a stigma theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences, such as those of social class."

"The central feature of the stigmatized individual's situation in life can now be stated. It is a question of what is often, if vaguely, called 'acceptance'. Those who have dealings with him fail to accord him the respect and regard which the un-contaminated aspects of his social identity have led them to anticipate extending, and have led him to anticipate receiving; he echoes this denial by finding that some of his own attributes warrant it."

"When there is a discrepancy between an individual's actual social identity and his virtual one, it is possible for this fact to be known to us before we normals contact him, or to be quite evident when he presents himself before us. He is a discredited person, and it is mainly he I have been dealing with until now. [...] However, when his differentness is not immediately apparent, and is not known beforehand, [...] he is a discreditable, not a discredited person [...]. The issue is [...] that of managing information about his failing. To display or not to display; to tell or not to tell; to let on or not to let on; to lie or not to lie; and in each case, to whom, how, when, and where. [...] It is this second general issue, the management of undisclosed discrediting information about self, that I am focusing on in these notes - in brief, 'passing'."

"A final point about social information must be raised; it has to do with the informing character of the 'with' relationship in our society. To be 'with' someone is to arrive at a social occasion in his company, walk with him down a street, be a member of his party in a restaurant, and so forth. The issue is that in certain circumstances the social identity of those an individual is with can be used as a source of information concerning his own social identity, the assumption being that he is what the others are."

"Personal identity, like social identity, divides up the individual's world of others for him. The division is first between the knowing and the unknowing. The knowing are those who have a personal identification of the individual; they need only see him or hear his name to bring this information into play. The unknowing are those for whom the individual constitutes an utter stranger, someone of whom they have begun no personal biography."

"It has been suggested that an individual's social identity divides up the world of people and places for him, and that his personal identity does this too, although differently. It is these frames of reference one must apply in studying the daily round of a particular stigmatized person, as he wends his way to and from his place of work, his place of residence, his place of shopping, and the places where he participates in recreation. A key concept here is the daily round, for it is the daily round that links the individual to his several social situations. And one studies the daily round with a special perspective in mind. To the extent that the individual is a discredited person, one looks for the routine cycle of restrictions he faces regarding social acceptance; to the extent that he is discreditable, for the contingencies he faces in managing information about himself."

"It is to be expected that voluntary maintenance of various types of distance will be employed strategically by those who pass, the discreditable here using much the same devices as do the discredited, but for slightly different reasons. By declining or avoiding overtures of intimacy the individual can avoid the consequent obligation to divulge information. By keeping relationships distant he ensures that time will not have to be spent with the other, for, as already stated, the more time that is spent with another the more chance of unanticipated events that disclose secrets."

"In conclusion, may I repeat that stigma involves not so much a set of concrete individuals who can be separated into two piles, the stigmatized and the normal, as a pervasive two-role social process in which every individual participates in both roles, at least in some connexions and in some phases of life. The normal and the stigmatized are not persons but rather perspectives. These are generated in social situations during mixed contacts by virtue of the unrealized norms that are likely to play upon the encounter. […] And since interaction roles are involved, not concrete individuals, it should come as no surprise that in many cases he who is stigmatized in one regard nicely exhibits all the normal prejudices held toward those who are stigmatized in another regard."

"There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive, or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged."

"There is a relation between persons and role. But the relationship answers to the interactive system—to the frame—in which the role is performed and the self of the performer is glimpsed. Self, then, is not an entity half-concealed behind events, but a changeable formula for managing oneself during them. Just as the current situation prescribes the official guise behind which we will conceal ourselves, so it provides where and how we will show through, the culture itself prescribing what sort of entity we must believe ourselves to be in order to have something to show through in this manner."

"So I ask that these papers be taken for what they merely are: exercises, trials, tryouts, a means of displaying possibilities, not establishing fact."

"Only a schmuck studies his own life."

"Erving Goffman, a Canadian sociologist, borrowed ideas from drama theory to explore how Shakespeare's saying "All the world's a stage/And all the men and women merely players" applies to life in social organizations. Goffman believed that individuals shape themselves and their social realities through performances that are similar to how dramatists and actors compose and present stories on a stage in front of an audience. Goffman developed his dramaturgical approach while studying a mental hospital wherein he discovered."

"Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell."

"I mean this report to serve as a sort of handbook detailing one sociological perspective from which social life can be studied, especially the kind of social life that is organised within the physical confines of a building or plant. A set of features will be described which together form a framework that can be applied to any concrete social establishment, be it domestic, industrial, or commercial."

"Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way."

"In many kinds of social interaction, unofficial communication provides a way in which one team can extend a definite but non-compromising invitation to the other, requesting that and formality be increased or decreased, or that both teams shift the interaction to one involving the performance of a new set of roles."

"In our society, defecation involves an individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our performances. Such activity also causes the individual to disarrange his clothing and to 'go out of play," that is, to drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in face-to-face interaction. At the same time it becomes difficult for him to reassemble his personal front should the need to enter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is a reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them."

"Often, when two teams enter social interaction, we can identify one as having the lower general prestige and the other team the higher. Ordinarily, when we think of realigning actions in such cases, we think of efforts on the part of the lower team to alter the basis of interaction in a direction more favourable to them or to decrease the social distance and formality between themselves and the higher team. Interestingly enough, there are occasions when it serves the wider goals of the higher team to lower barriers and admit the lower team to greater intimacy and equality with it."

"In recent years there have been elaborate attempts to bring into one framework the concepts and findings derived from three different areas of inquiry: the individual personality, social interaction, and society. I would like to suggest here a simple addition to these inter-disciplinary attempts."

"When an individual appears before others, he wittingly and unwittingly projects a definition of the situation, of which a conception of himself is an important part. When an event occurs which is expressively incompatible with this fostered impression, significant consequences are simultaneously felt in three levels of social reality, each of which involves a different point of reference and a different order of fact."

"The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented."

"The degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others."

"Knowing that his audiences are capable of forming bad impressions of him, the individual may come to feel ashamed of a well-intentioned honest act merely because the context of its performance provides false impressions that are bad. Feeling this unwarranted shame, he may feel that his feelings can be seen; feeling that he is thus seen, he may feel that his appearance confirms these false conclusions concerning him. He may then add to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty. In this way it is possible for all of us to become fleetingly for ourselves the worst person we can imagine that others might imagine us to be."

"A total institution may be defined as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no laws. This volume deals with total institutions in general and one example, mental hospitals, in particular."

"The total institutions of our society can be linked in five rough groupings. First, there are institutions established to care for persons felt to be both incapable and harmless; these are the homes for the blind, the aged, the orphaned, and the indigent. Second, there are places established to care for persons felt to be incapable of looking after themselves and a threat to the community, albeit an unintended one: TB sanitaria, mental hospitals, and leprosaria. A third type of total institution is organised to protect the community against what are felt to be intentional dangers to it, with the welfare of the persons thus sequestered not the immediate issue: jails, penitentiaries, P.O.W. camps, and concentration camps. Fourth, there are institutions purportedly established the better to pursue some work-like tasks and justifying themselves only on these instrumental grounds: army barracks, ships, boarding schools, work camps, colonial compounds, and large mansions from the point of view of those who live in the servants' quarters. Finally, there are those establishments designed as retreats from the world even while often serving also as training stations for the religious; examples are abbeys, monasteries, convents, and other cloisters."

"A basic social arrangement in modern society is that the individual tends to sleep, play and work in different places with different co-participants, under different authorities, and without an over-all rational plan. The central feature of total institutions can be described as a breakdown of the barriers ordinarily separating these three spheres of life. First, all aspects of life are conducted in the same place and under the same central authority. Second, each phase of the member's daily activity is carried on in the immediate company of a large batch of others, all of whom are treated alike and required to do the same thing together. Third, all phases of the day's activities are tightly scheduled, with one activity leading at prearranged time into the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed from above by a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials. Finally, the various enforced activities are brought together into a single rational plan purportedly designed to fulfil the official aims of the institution."

"In total institutions there is a basic split between a large managed group, conveniently called inmates, and a small supervisory staff. Inmates typically live in the institution and have restricted contact with the world outside the walls. The staff often operates on an eight-hour day and is socially integrated into the outside world."