New religious movement membership and the importance of stable 'others' for the making of selves

Title: New religious movement membership and the importance of stable 'others' for the making of selves
Creator: Coates, Dominiek D.
Relation: Journal of Religion and Health Vol. 53, Issue 5, p. 1300-1316
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10943-013-9715-0
Publisher: Springer
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2014
Description: Challenging the view that people join New Religious Movements because they have fallen victim to powerful brainwashing techniques, the analysis of in-depth life history interviews of 23 former members from 11 different Australian ‘cults’ suggests that membership was personally negotiated and motivated by a desire for stronger social connections, albeit for different reasons. While for some participants, a desire for social connectedness was related to a strong need for guidance and direction from ‘stable’ others, for others it reflected a desire for self-change or self-enhancement. To make sense of the participant narratives, symbolic interactionist understandings of the self are applied.
Subject: new religious movements; cults; symbolic interactionism; social connectedness; self-change
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1063156
Identifier: uon:17211
Identifier: ISSN:0022-4197
Language: eng
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