Reactionary

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary 

In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante—the previous political state of society—which the person believes possessed positive characteristics that are absent from contemporary society. As a descriptor term, reactionary derives from the ideological context of the left–right political spectrum. As an adjective, the word reactionary describes points of view and policies meant to restore a status quo ante.

As an ideology, reactionism is a tradition in right-wing politics; the reactionary stance opposes policies for the social transformation of society, whereas conservatives seek to preserve the socio-economic structure and order that exists in the present. In popular usage, reactionary refers to a strong traditionalist conservative political perspective of a person opposed to social, political, and economic change.

Reactionary ideologies can be radical in the sense of political extremism in service to re-establishing past conditions. To some writers, the term reactionary carries negative connotations—Peter King observed that it is "an unsought-for label, used as a torment rather than a badge of honor." Despite this, the descriptor "political reactionary" has been adopted by writers such as the Austrian monarchist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, the Scottish journalist Gerald Warner of Craigenmaddie, the Colombian political theologian Nicolás Gómez Dávila, and the American historian John Lukacs.

History and usage

See also: Glossary of the French Revolution and List of people associated with the French Revolution

The French Revolution gave the English language three politically descriptive words denoting anti-progressive politics: (i) "reactionary", (ii) "conservative", and (iii) "right". "Reactionary" derives from the French word réactionnaire (a late 18th-century coinage based on the word réaction, "reaction") and "conservative" from conservateur, identifying monarchist parliamentarians opposed to the revolution. In this French usage, reactionary denotes "a movement towards the reversal of an existing tendency or state" and a "return to a previous condition of affairs". The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first English language usage in 1799 in a translation of Lazare Carnot's letter on the Coup of 18 Fructidor.

Several revolutions occurred in 1848 and early 1849, before reactionary forces regained control and the revolutions collapsed.

During the French Revolution, conservative forces (especially within the Catholic Church) organized opposition to the progressive sociopolitical and economic changes brought by the Revolution; and so Conservatives fought to restore the temporal authority of the Church and Crown. In 19th Century European politics, the reactionary class included the Catholic Church's hierarchy and the aristocracy, royal families, and royalists who believed that national government was the sole domain of the Church and the State. In France, supporters of traditional rule by direct heirs of the House of Bourbon dynasty were labeled the legitimist reaction. In the Third Republic, the monarchists were the reactionary faction, later renamed Conservative.

In the 19th century, reactionary denoted people who idealized feudalism and the pre-modern era—before the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution—when economies were mostly agrarian, a landed aristocracy dominated society, a hereditary king ruled, and the Catholic Church was society's moral center. Those labeled "reactionary" favored the aristocracy instead of the middle and working classes. Reactionaries opposed democracy and parliamentarism.

Thermidorian Reaction

Main article: Thermidorian Reaction

The Thermidorian Reaction was a movement within the French Revolution against the perceived excesses of the Jacobins. Maximilien Robespierre's Reign of Terror ended on 27 July 1794 (9 Thermidor year II in the French Republican Calendar). The overthrow of Robespierre signaled the reassertion of the French National Convention over the Committee of Public Safety. The Jacobins were suppressed, the prisons were emptied, and the committee was shorn of its powers. After the execution of some 104 Robespierre supporters, the Thermidorian Reaction stopped using the guillotine against alleged counter-revolutionaries, set a middle course between the monarchists and the radicals, and ushered in a time of relative exuberance and its accompanying corruption.

Restoration of the French monarchy

See also: Bourbon Restoration in France

Caricature of Louis XVIII preparing for the French intervention in Spain to help the Spanish Royalists, by George Cruikshank

With the Congress of Vienna, inspired by Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the monarchs of Russia, Prussia and Austria formed the Holy Alliance, a form of collective security against revolution and Bonapartism. This instance of reaction was surpassed by a movement that developed in France when, after the second fall of Napoleon, the Bourbon Restoration, or reinstatement of the Bourbon dynasty, ensued. This time it was to be a constitutional monarchy, with an elected lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. The Franchise was restricted to men over the age of forty, which indicated that for the first fifteen years of their lives, they had lived under the ancien régime. Nevertheless, King Louis XVIII worried he would still suffer an intractable parliament. He was delighted with the ultra-royalists, or Ultras, whom the election returned, declaring that he had found a chambre introuvable, literally, an "unfindable house".

It was the Declaration of Saint-Ouen that prepared the way for the Restoration. Before the French Revolution, which radically and bloodily overthrew most aspects of French society's organization, the only way constitutional change could be instituted was by extracting it from old legal documents that could be interpreted as agreeing with the proposal. Everything new had to be expressed as a righteous revival of something old that had lapsed and had been forgotten. This was also the means used by diminished aristocrats to get themselves a bigger piece of the pie. In the 18th century, those gentry whose fortunes and prestige had diminished to the level of peasants would search diligently for every ancient feudal statute that might give them something. For example, the "ban" meant that all peasants had to grind their grain in their lord's mill. Therefore, these gentry came to the French States-General of 1789 fully prepared to press for expanding such practices in all provinces to the legal limit. They were horrified when, for example, the French Revolution permitted common citizens to go hunting, one of the few perquisites they had always enjoyed.

Thus with the Bourbons Restoration, the Chambre Introuvable set about reverting every law to return society to conditions prior to the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV, when the power of the Second Estate was at its zenith. This clearly distinguishes a "reactionary" from a "conservative." The use of the word "reactionary" in later days as a political slur is thus often rhetorical since there is nothing directly comparable with the Chambre Introuvable in the history of other countries.

Clerical philosophers

Main article: Clerical philosophers

In the French Revolution's aftermath, France was continually wracked by quarrels between right-wing legitimists and left-wing revolutionaries. Herein arose the clerical philosophers—Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, François-René de Chateaubriand—whose answer was restoring the House of Bourbon and reinstalling the Catholic Church as the established church. Since then, France's political spectrum has featured similar divisions (see Action Française). The teachings of the 19th-century popes buttressed the ideas of the clerical philosophers.

Metternich and containment

See also: Age of Metternich

From 1815 to 1848, Prince Metternich, the foreign minister of the Austrian Empire, stepped in to organize the containment of revolutionary forces through international alliances to prevent revolutionary fervor. At the Congress of Vienna, he was very influential in establishing the new order, the Concert of Europe, after the defeat of Napoleon.

After the Congress, Prince Metternich worked hard to bolster and stabilize the conservative regime of the Restoration period. He worked furiously to prevent Russia's Tsar Alexander I (who aided the liberal forces in Germany, Italy, and France) from gaining influence in Europe. The Church was his principal ally. He promoted it as a conservative principle of order while opposing nationalist and liberal tendencies within the Church. His basic philosophy was based on Edmund Burke, who championed the need for old roots and the orderly development of society. He opposed democratic and parliamentary institutions but favored modernizing existing structures through gradual reform. Despite Metternich's efforts, a series of revolutions rocked Europe in 1848.

20th century

See also: Reactionary modernism

1932 poster of the French Radical Party (PRRRS) against the attempt by the Laval government to replace the two-round system, which favored the Radicals, with plurality ("The two-round suffrage will overcome the reaction.")

In the 20th century, proponents of socialism and communism used the term reactionary polemically to label their enemies, such as the White Armies, who fought in the Russian Civil War against the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. In Marxist terminology, reactionary is a pejorative adjective denoting people whose ideas might appear to be socialist but, in their opinion, contain elements of feudalism, capitalism, nationalism, fascism, or other characteristics of the ruling class, including usage between conflicting factions of Marxist movements. Non-socialists also used the label reactionary, with British diplomat Sir John Jordan nicknaming the Chinese Royalist Party the "reactionary party" for supporting the Qing dynasty and opposing republicanism during the Xinhai Revolution in 1912.

Reactionary is also used to denote supporters of authoritarian anti-communist régimes such as Vichy France, Spain under Franco, and Portugal under Salazar. One example occurred after Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On 26 October 1958, the day following the Nobel Committee's announcement, Moscow's Literary Gazette ran a polemical article by David Zaslavski entitled, Reactionary Propaganda Uproar over a Literary Weed.

The Italian Fascists desired a new social order based on the ancient feudal principle of delegation (though without serfdom) in their enthusiasm for the corporate state. Benito Mussolini said that "fascism is reaction" and that "fascism, which did not fear to call itself reactionary... has not today any impediment against declaring itself illiberal and anti-liberal." Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini also attacked certain reactionary policies, particularly monarchism, and veiled some aspects of Italian conservative Catholicism. They wrote, "History doesn't travel backwards. The fascist doctrine has not taken Joseph de Maistre as its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is of the past, and so is ecclesiolatry." They further elaborated in their political doctrine that fascism "is not reactionary [in the old way] but revolutionary."

Conversely, they explained that fascism was of the right, not the left. Fascism was certainly not simply a return to tradition, as it carried the centralized state beyond even what had been seen in absolute monarchies. Fascist one-party states were as centralized as most communist states, and fascism's intense nationalism was not found in the period prior to the French Revolution.Although the German Nazis did not consider themselves fascists or reactionaries and condemned the traditional German forces of reaction (Prussian monarchists, Junker nobility, and Roman Catholic clergy) as being among their enemies, next to their Red Front enemies in the Nazi Party march Die Fahne hoch, they virulently opposed revolutionary leftism. The fact that the Nazis called their 1933 rise to power the Volksgemeinschaft (national revolution) showed that, like the Italian Fascists, they supported some form of revolution; however, the Germans and Italian fascists both idealized tradition, folklore, and the tenets of classical thought and leadership, as exemplified in Nazi-era Germany by the idolization of Frederick the Great. They also rejected the Weimar Republic parliamentary era under the Weimar Constitution, which had succeeded the monarchy in 1918, despite it also being capitalist and classical. Although claiming to be separate from reactionism, the Nazis' rejection of Weimar was based on ostensibly reactionary principles, as the Nazis claimed that the parliamentary system was simply the first step towards Bolshevism and instead idealized more reactionary parts of Germany's past. They referred to Nazi Germany as the German Realm and informally as the Drittes Reich (Third Realm), a reference to past reactionary German entities: the Holy Roman Empire (First Realm) and the German Empire (Second Realm).

Clericalist movements, sometimes labeled as clerical fascist by their critics, can be considered reactionaries in terms of the 19th century since they share some elements of fascism while at the same time promoting a return to the pre-revolutionary model of social relations, with a strong role for the Church. Their utmost philosopher was Nicolás Gómez Dávila.

Political scientist Corey Robin argues that modern conservatism in the United States is fundamentally reactionary in his book The Reactionary Mind.

21st century

Main articles: Dark Enlightenment and Nippon Kaigi

Warning against visiting reactionary websites in a Vietnamese internet café

Japan's right-wing nationalist and populist movements and related organizations, which emerged rapidly from the late 20th century, are considered "reactionary" because they revised the post-war peace constitution and have an advocating attitude toward the Japanese Empire.

"Neo-reactionary" is a term that is sometimes a self-description of an informal group of online political theorists who have been active since the 2000s. The phrase "neo-reactionary" was coined by "Mencius Moldbug" (the pseudonym of Curtis Yarvin, a computer programmer) in 2008. Arnold Kling used it in 2010 to describe "Moldbug", and the subculture quickly adopted it. Proponents of the "Neo-reactionary" movement (also called the "Dark Enlightenment" movement) include philosopher Nick Land, among others.

Impact of microcredit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_microcredit 

The impact of microcredit is a subject of much controversy. Proponents state that it reduces poverty through higher employment and higher incomes. This is expected to lead to improved nutrition and improved education of the borrowers' children. Some argue that microcredit empowers women. In the US and Canada, it is argued that microcredit helps recipients to graduate from welfare programs. Critics say that microcredit has not increased incomes, but has driven poor households into a debt trap, in some cases even leading to suicide. They add that the money from loans is often used for durable consumer goods or consumption instead of being used for productive investments, that it fails to empower women, and that it has not improved health or education.

The available evidence indicates that in many cases microcredit has facilitated the creation and the growth of businesses. It has often generated self-employment, but it has not necessarily increased incomes after interest payments. In some cases it has driven borrowers into debt traps. In addition, it can produce unintended rent-seeking entrepreneurship. There is no evidence that microcredit has empowered women. In short, microcredit has achieved much less than what its proponents said it would achieve, but its negative impacts have not been as drastic as some critics have argued. Microcredit is just one factor influencing the success of a small businesses, whose success is influenced to a much larger extent by how much an economy or a particular market grows. A critical review of 58 papers covering experiences in 18 countries concluded "there is no good evidence for the beneficent impact of microfinance on the well-being of poor people" and that "the greatest impacts are reported by studies with the weakest designs".

The attempt to objectively evaluate the impact of microcredit on a global or a local scale is marred by numerous methodological challenges. There are only few rigorous evaluations of microcredit, and much of the literature on the impact of microcredit is based in anecdotal reports or case studies that are not representative. Even among the rigorous evaluations many "suffer from weak methodologies and inadequate data", according to a systematic literature review of the impact of microcredit conducted in 2011 by a group of researchers on behalf of UKAid. A 2008 review of over 100 articles on microcredit found that only 6 used enough quantitative data to be representative, and none employed rigorous methods such as randomized control trials. Rigorous impact evaluations using control and treatment groups are difficult to undertake today, because microcredit is so common in developing countries today that few locations remain where such a research setting can still be applied. Further complicating impact studies is the often highly politicized context of poverty alleviation initiatives.

Income and poverty

Microlending aims at increasing income through productive activities such as goat herding, as shown here in Rwanda on a cooperative funded through microlending.

Among 6 representative studies selected from a sample of more than 100 studies as being methodologically most sound, five found no evidence that microcredit reduced poverty, although they found other positive impacts.

The first randomized evaluation of the impact of introducing microcredit in a new market has been undertaken by Abhijit Banerjee of the M.I.T. Poverty Action Lab in slums in Hyderabad, India, in 2008. It compared two groups of randomly selected slums. In the treatment group banks opened branches that provided microcredits, while in the control group this was not the case. The study showed that fifteen to 18 months after lending began, there was no effect on average monthly expenditure per capita, but expenditure on durable goods increased. Consumption thus shifted from consumables to durable goods. Also, the number of new businesses increased by one third, but they were not very profitable. Pulitzer prize winner Nicholas Kristof quotes another rigorous study by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo covering loans by Spandana in India. In this case, loans were also used to buy durable goods, but in addition they were used to expand existing businesses.

Tazul Islam argues that the Grameen Bank does not reach the poorest, since the clients of the bank tend to be clustered around the poverty line of predominantly moderately poor or vulnerable non-poor. Of the poor who join Grameen bank’s microcredit program, a high percentage often drop out after only a few loan cycles, while many others eventually drop out in later loan cycles as loan amounts begin to exceed their repayment capacity. Nevertheless, he concludes that microcredit in Bangladesh had a "positive impact on enterprise and household income and asset accumulation". Microloans in Canada have allowed small business owners to make their businesses their primary source of income with 67% of the borrowers showing a significant increase in their income as a result of their participation in certain micro-loan programs.

A film by the Danish journalist Tom Heinemann, The Micro Debt, alleges that microcredit in Bangladesh had little impact on poverty. The film highlighted the purported continued poverty of Sufiya Begum, the original loan recipient of Grameen, in Jobra Village. After a thorough investigation in December 2010 by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, the alleged problems have been proven to be false. Documentary maker Gayle Ferraro found the woman alive and well, confirming the original Grameen story.

Milford Bateman, the author of Why Doesn't Microfinance Work?, argues that microcredit offers only an "illusion of poverty reduction". "As in any lottery or game of chance, a few in poverty do manage to establish microenterprises that produce a decent living," he argues, but "these isolated and often temporary positives are swamped by the largely overlooked negatives." Bateman concludes that "The international development community is now faced with the reality that, overall, microfinance has been a development policy blunder of quite historic proportions."

Professor Anu Muhammad of Jahangirnagar University in Bangladesh, a Marxist and critic of microcredit, claims that "according to different studies" which he does not name, "you cannot find more than 5-10 per cent people who could change their economic conditions through micro-credit."

German journalist Kathrin Hartmann relates tales of women who she met in 2012 while visiting Kurigram District in Bangladesh trapped in debt. She was told by rural women of brutal methods to enforce debt repayments, including the forced sale of goats, cows, house utensils and land. She also describes intense peer pressure under group lending schemes. Heavily indebted men and women even sold their kidneys to organized groups in order to be able to repay loans, as discovered by the police in summer 2011. Hartmann writes, without quoting a source, that one third of microcredits are taken in order to pay for food or health care, especially during the times of the year called Monga when food and work opportunities are scarcest. Children drop out of school to earn money and families cut down on food expenses in order to repay loans. When natural disasters strike, such as Cyclone Sidr in 2007, weekly instalments to repay loans continue, although the ability of borrowers to earn income has been destroyed by the disasters.

A study in the Philippines by Dean Karlan of Yale University and of Innovations for Poverty Action compared a treatment group, financed through microcredit, and a control group that did not receive microcredit, in Manila. In this case many microcredits were loaned to people with existing businesses. The businesses became more profitable, but laid off unproductive employees including friends and relatives that they previously had felt obliged to employ. Male-owned businesses increased profits, but female-owned businesses did not.

Debt traps, suicides and group pressure

In 2008, economist Jonathan Morduch of New York University noted there were still major gaps in research on microcredit, such as on debt traps and the use of microcredits for consumption.

There has been much criticism of the high interest rates charged to borrowers. The real average portfolio yield cited by the sample of 704 microfinance institutions that voluntarily submitted reports to the MicroBanking Bulletin in 2006 was 22.3% annually. However, annual rates charged to clients are higher, as they also include local inflation and the bad debt expenses of the microfinance institution. Interest rates charged by the Mexican Banco Compartamos on their micro-loans reached 86% per year while it sold stocks in the stock market in 2007.

In India microfinance institutions have been criticized for creating small-debt traps for the poor in Andhra Pradesh with high interest rates and coercive methods of recovery. Villagers often did not know the interest that they were being charged and were not aware of the consequences of taking multiple loans as they take the second loan to clear the first loan. In 2010 aggressive lending by microcredit institutions has been blamed for over 80 suicides in Andhra Pradesh. Bangladesh's former Finance and Planning Minister M. Saifur Rahman charged in 2005 that some microfinance institutions use excessive interest rates. A 2008 study in Bangladesh showed that some loan recipients sink into a cycle of debt, using a microloan from one organization to meet interest obligations from another. Field officers who are in a position of power locally and are remunerated based on repayment rates sometimes use coercive and even violent tactics to collect instalments on the microloans.

Private banks and large MNCs have become involved in microfinance. With large corporations investing, local MFIs are under pressure to deliver high returns each quarter; this comes at the expense of borrowers. Foreign and corporate capital investment take advantage of emerging and developing economies across Asia and Africa, introducing new forms of collateral requirements; individuals borrowers sometimes end up in even more debilitating debt and poverty than when they started.

The Cambodian market offers a key example of such problematic and debilitating debt traps. Throughout the early 1990s, Cambodia began as a success story for microfinance in the developing world. By the early 2000s, however, the situation deteriorated until “the typical loan amount [to] now exceed the average annual household income and require land-based collateral”. The introduction of land-based collateral has driven thousands of borrowers to sell their property at depreciating rates compared to actual property value in order to pay off their accumulating debts. Companies and stakeholders, on the other hand, benefit from borrower losses. In 2020, as the pandemic ravaged Cambodia’s economy, “six of the country’s eight biggest microfinance companies posted record earnings,” while loanees were driven into devastating amounts of debt due to skyrocketing interest rates. As the market has evolved, companies have deviated from the initial goal of providing loans to fund and develop income-generating opportunities to offering credit for daily living costs and prior loan repayments.

Some microfinance institutions lend only to groups of women. This practice puts loan recipients under pressure, because all women are liable for the loans of the other women in the group and each member can only obtain a new loan if each member has repaid the previous loan.

Muhammad Yunus argues that microfinance institutions that charge more than 15% above their long-term operating costs should face penalties.

Empowerment of women

Meeting of clients of the Indian microlender ESAF in the state of Kerala.

Microcredit has been directed at women because it was believed that, compared to men, they are better clients of microfinance institutions and that women's access to microcredit has more desirable development outcomes, since women tend to spend more money on basic needs compared to men. Microcredit has also been promoted as a tool to empower women. Early studies tended to confirm this positive picture. For example, a 1996 study in Bangladesh claims that the "success" of reaching women with microcredit was "highly impressive", but also notes that loans are often given over to male relatives or husbands. Only in a minority of cases there was an increase in domestic violence for women who did not get the loan or had to wait a long time to get the loan. The study also showed that women are more likely to retain control over their loans in traditional women’s work like livestock rearing that are considered "women's work". The President of Grameen Foundation USA suggested in 2005, based on a review of various studies, that "there is strong evidence that female clients are empowered". It also found that "even in cases when women take but do not use the loan themselves, they and their families benefit more than if the loan had gone directly to their husbands".

However, a 2008 study of microcredit programs in Bangladesh found that women often act merely as collection agents for their husbands and sons, such that the men spend the money themselves while women are saddled with the credit risk. The bigger the size of the loan, the more women lose control. For example, a study in Bangladesh showed that women have 100% control over loans that are smaller than 1000 Taka but only 46% of control if the loan is bigger than 4,000 Taka. A study in India showed that women may be put under pressure by their male relatives to join a credit group and indebt themselves. A study in Bangladesh showed that microcredit increases dowries, with women forced at times to take microcredit loans as the only means to pay these increased dowries for their daughters. The first randomized evaluation of the introduction of microcredit, carried out in Hyderabad in India, found no impact on women's decision-making.

One scientist argues that empowerment cannot be given to women by (mostly male) development practitioners in the form of loans, since empowerment is a self-directed process. More female employees should be hired by microfinance institutions, and male staff should be trained in gender awareness.

Based on the evidence of the two rigorous evaluations in India and in Manila, Nicolas Kristof concludes that "there is no evidence that microcredit has any effect on (...) women’s empowerment."

Other impacts

Tazul Islam asserts a positive influence of microcredit on the level of education, health and nutrition. In the US, microcredit has created jobs directly and indirectly, as 60% of borrowers were able to hire others. Business owners in Canada were able to improve their housing situation after their income improved due to business expansion facilitated by microloans, 70% indicating their housing has improved. Ultimately, many of the small business owners that use social funding are able to graduate from government funding.  According to reports every domestic microcredit loan creates 2.4 jobs. These entrepreneurs provide wages that are, on average, 25% higher than minimum wage.

A 2005 review published by the Grameen Foundation summarize scores of studies, concluding that "society-wide benefits that go beyond clients’ families are apparently significant".

Based on the evidence of two rigorous evaluations in India and in Manila, Nicolas Kristof concludes that "there is no evidence that microcredit has any effect on health or education."

Unintended consequences of microfinance can include informal intermediaton: That is, some entrepreneurial borrowers become informal intermediaries between microfinance initiatives and poorer micro-entrepreneurs. Those who more easily qualify for microfinance split loans into smaller credit to even poorer borrowers. Informal intermediation ranges from casual intermediaries at the good or benign end of the spectrum to 'loan sharks' at the professional and sometimes criminal end of the spectrum.

Anthropology of development

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology_of_development 

 

The anthropology of development is a term applied to a body of anthropological work which views development from a critical perspective. The kind of issues addressed, and implications for the approach typically adopted can be gleaned from a list questions posed by Gow (1996). These questions involve anthropologists asking why, if a key development goal is to alleviate poverty, is poverty increasing? Why is there such a gap between plans and outcomes? Why are those working in development so willing to disregard history and the lessons it might offer? Why is development so externally driven rather than having an internal basis? In short, why is there such a lack of planned development?

This anthropology of development has been distinguished from development anthropology. Development anthropology refers to the application of anthropological perspectives to the multidisciplinary branch of development studies. It takes international development and international aid as primary objects. In this branch of anthropology, the term development refers to the social action made by different agents (institutions, business, enterprise, states, independent volunteers) who are trying to modify the economic, technical, political or/and social life of a given place in the world, especially in impoverished, formerly colonized regions.

Development anthropologists share a commitment to simultaneously critique and contribute to projects and institutions that create and administer Western projects that seek to improve the economic well-being of the most marginalized, and to eliminate poverty. While some theorists distinguish between the 'anthropology of development' (in which development is the object of study) and development anthropology (as an applied practice), this distinction is increasingly thought of as obsolete.

Early approaches to development

Some describe the anthropological critique of development as one that pits modernization and an eradication of the indigenous culture, but this is too reductive and not the case with the majority of scholarly work. In fact, most anthropologists who work in impoverished areas desire the same economic relief for the people they study as policymakers, however they are wary about the assumptions and models on which development interventions are based. Anthropologists and others who critique development projects instead view Western development itself as a product of Western culture that must be refined in order to better help those it claims to aid. The problem therefore is not that of markets driving out culture, but of the fundamental blind-spots of Western developmental culture itself. Criticism often focuses therefore on the cultural bias and blind-spots of Western development institutions, or modernization models that: systematically represent non-Western societies as more deficient than the West; erroneously assume that Western modes of production and historical processes are repeatable in all contexts; or that do not take into account hundreds of years of colonial exploitation by the West that has tended to destroy the resources of former colonial society. Most critically, anthropologists argue that sustainable development requires at the very least more inclusion of the people who the project aims to target to be involved in the creation, management and decision-making process in the project creation in order to improve development.

Pre-WWII: Rhodes-Livingstone Institute

The British government established the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in 1937 to conduct social science research in British Central Africa. It was part of the colonial establishment, although its head, anthropologist Max Gluckman, was a critic of colonial rule. Gluckman refused to describe colonialism as a simple case of "culture contact" since it was not a case of cultures mutually influencing each other, but of the forced incorporation of Africans into a foreign social, political and economic system. The anthropologists of the Institute were core members of what came to be known as the "Manchester school" of anthropology noted for looking at issues of social justice such as apartheid and class conflict.

Culture of poverty

Main article: Culture of poverty

The term "subculture of poverty" (later shortened to "culture of poverty") made its first prominent appearance in the ethnography Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (1959) by anthropologist Oscar Lewis. Lewis struggled to render "the poor" as legitimate subjects whose lives were transformed by poverty. He argued that although the burdens of poverty were systemic and therefore imposed upon these members of society, they led to the formation of an autonomous subculture as children were socialized into behaviors and attitudes that perpetuated their inability to escape the underclass. In sociology and anthropology, the concept created a backlash, pushing scholars to abandon cultural justifications and negative descriptions of poverty, fearing such analysis may be read as "blaming-the-victim."

Modernization Theory and its critics

The most influential modernization theorist in development was Walt Rostow, whose The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960) concentrates on the economic side of the modernization, and especially the factors needed for a country to reach "take-off" to self-sustaining growth. He argued that today's underdeveloped areas are in a similar situation to that of today's developed areas at some time in the past, and that therefore the task in helping the underdeveloped areas out of poverty is to accelerate them along this supposed common path of development, by various means such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the world market. Rostow's unilineal evolutionist model hypothesized all societies would progress through the same stages to a modernity defined by the West. The model postulates that economic growth occurs in five basic stages, of varying length:

1. Traditional society
2. Preconditions for take-off
3. Take-off
4. Drive to maturity
5. Age of High mass consumption

As should be clear from the subtitle of his book, Rostow sought to provide a capitalist rebuttal to the unilinear Marxist growth models being pursued in the newly independent communist regimes in the second and third world; an effort that would lead to the "Green revolution" to combat the "Red revolution".

George Dalton and the substantivists

George Dalton applied the substantivist economic ideas of Karl Polanyi to economic anthropology, and to development issues. The substantivist approach demonstrated the ways in which economic activities in non-market societies were embedded in other, non-economic social institutions such as kinship, religion and political relations. He therefore critiqued the formalist economic modelling of Rostow. He was the author of "Growth without development: An economic survey of Liberia" (1966, with Robert W. Clower) and "Economic Anthropology and Development: Essays on Tribal and Peasant Economies" (1971).

Dependency theory

Main articles: World-systems theory and Dependency theory

Dependency theory arose as a theory in Latin America in reaction to modernization theory. It argues that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It is a central contention of dependency theory that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the "World-system" and hence poor countries will not follow Rostow's predicted path of modernization. Dependency theory rejected Rostow's view, arguing that underdeveloped countries are not merely primitive versions of developed countries, but have unique features and structures of their own; and, importantly, are in the situation of being the weaker members in a world market economy and hence unable to change the system.

Immanuel Wallerstein's "world-systems theory" was the version of Dependency theory that most North American anthropologists engaged with. His theories are similar to Dependency theory, although he placed more emphasis on the system as system, and focused on the developments of the core rather than periphery. Wallerstein also provided an historical account of the development of capitalism which had been missing from Dependency theory.

'Women in development' (WID)

Main articles: Women in development and Gender and development

Women in development (WID) is an approach to development projects that emerged in the 1970s, calling for treatment of women's issues in development projects. Later, the Gender and development (GAD) approach proposed more emphasis on gender relations rather than seeing women's issues in isolation. The WID school grew out of the pioneering work of Esther Boserup. Boserup's most notable book is The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure. This book presents a "dynamic analysis embracing all types of primitive agriculture." Drawing on Boserup, the WID theorists pointed out that the division of labour in agriculture is frequently gendered, and that in societies practicing shifting cultivation, it is women who conduct most of the agricultural work. Development projects, however, were skewed towards men on the assumption they were "heads of households."

Development discourse and the creation of the 'underdeveloped' world

A major critique of development from anthropologists came from Arturo Escobar's seminal book Encountering Development, which argued that Western development largely exploited non-Western peoples. Arturo Escobar views international development as a means for the Occident to keep control over the resources of its former colonies. Escobar shows that between 1945 and 1960, while the former colonies were going through decolonization, development plans helped to maintain the third world's dependency on the old metropole. Development projects themselves flourished in the wake of WWII, and during the cold war, when they were developed to

1. stop the spread of Communism with the spread of capitalist markets; and

2. create more prosperity for the West and its products by creating a global consumer demand for finished Western products abroad.

Some scholars blame the different agents for having only considered a small aspect of the local people's lives without analyzing broader consequences, while others like dependency theory or Escobar argue that development projects are doomed to failure for the fundamental ways they privilege Western industry and corporations. Escobar's argument echos the earlier work of dependency theory and follows a larger critique more recently posed by Foucault and other poststructuralists.

The World Bank and the development regime

The World Bank Group consists of multiple institutions including the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).  IDA credits as well as IBRD loans support both development projects, and structural adjustment programs alike.  

The IDA of the World Bank Group was created in 1960, per urgent request of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  The IDA gave the Bank the resources and mandate it required to address the issues of the poorest countries and their citizens.  This institution served as a channel for the more economically stable nations of the world to assist those with less financial stability by providing long-term loans at no interest to the most economically challenged among developing countries.  The IDA's concessional financing by 138 countries is mainly exclusive to countries that have a per capita income of $400 or less (no more than about $900) and lack the financial means to borrow from the IBRD, the main lending institution of the World Bank.  Loans issued by the IDA carry maturity dates of 35 or 40 years from the date of issue, with a 10-year grace period on the principal repayment.  In the fiscal year of 1989, total lending for the World Bank was approximately $23.06 billion.

Per present day, more than 2.5 billion people, more than half of the developing world representing 79 countries, have the eligibility to borrow from the IDA.  Since its creation in 1960, the IDA remains the single largest source of donor funding for social services at a basic level; including health, clean water, sanitation, education, and infrastructure to the world's impoverished nations.

In the 1950s, many of these nations were newly independent from colonial rule, therefore suffering from economic and political instability and an inability to afford development loans on the typical terms offered by the World Bank.  Utilizing the same criteria to evaluate loans as the IBRD facility of the World Bank, the IDA's development regime pursues funding projects that protect the environment and build needed infrastructure.  They also aid the betterment of conditions supporting the development of private industries, and support reforms that function to liberalize countries' economies.  Since its establishment in 1960, the IDA has lent $106 billion to 106 countries to fund the basic needs of billions of poverty-stricken peoples.

IDA lending for Fiscal Year 1989 (FY89) totaled at $4.9 billion in credits and broken down by region: 48% to Africa, 44% to Asia, and 8% to Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

IDA lending for FY89 by sector approximates as follows: 29% agriculture; 24% structural and sector adjustment lending; 16% transportation and telecommunications; 10% energy; 9% education; 5% population, health, and nutrition; 4% water supply and sewage.

Success of the IDA

On a major scale, the global development community has been impacted by the IDA, with success rates that compare favorably with both public and private sector investments around the world.  Thirty-two countries that borrowed from the IDA have resulting growth and development beyond the point where they have lost their eligibility to use IDA funds, granting them "graduate" status from the IDA.

The Concerns of the IDA

Members of the IDA community, including the IDA's most avid supporters, have raised criticisms concerning IDA policies, effectiveness, and resources.  There is much room for improvement in the IDA's track record, namely for its support in Africa.  A number of policy reforms instituted by a number of African countries had failed to obtain desired results.  The specific failures lay in the decline in export prices coupled with the emerging restrictions on the import of African goods, done by some of the industrialized countries.  The World Bank providing service to Africa by enhancing its pursuit in its current development strategy proved insufficient in placing its nations on a secure path of development.

The development of underdevelopment

Governmentality: Development as 'anti-politics machine'

Main article: The Anti-Politics Machine

Location of Lesotho in South Africa

At a critical juncture in the early nineteenth century the state began to connect itself to a series of groups "that in different ways had long tried to shape and administer the lives of individuals in pursuit of various goals" rather than simply extend the absolutist state's repressive machinery of social control. Michel Foucault's work on the prison, the clinic, and the asylum – on the development of "bio-power" – analyzed the plurality of governing agencies and authorities who developed programs, strategies, and technologies that were deployed to optimize the health, welfare and life of populations. He referred to this process with the neologism, "governmentality" (governmental rationality). One of the last of these new applied sciences was the "development apparatus", the post-world war extension of colonial rule after the independence of third world states. James Ferguson utilized the governmentality framework in "The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho" (1990), the first in many similar explorations. Ferguson sought to explore how "development discourse" works. That is, how do the language and practices used by development specialists influence the ways in which development is delivered, and what unintended consequences does it foster. He found that development projects which failed in their own terms could be redefined as "successes" on which new projects were to be modelled. The net effect of development, he found, was to "de-politicize" questions of resource allocation, and to strengthen bureaucratic power. In his analysis of a development project in Lesotho (South Africa) between 1978 and 1982, he examined the following discursive maneuvers.

Ferguson points out that a critical part of the development process is the way in which the object of development is defined. In defining this object, it is severed from its historical and geographic context, and isolated as a "Less-Developed Country." In the case of Lesotho, its history as a grain exporting region was ignored, as was its current role as a labour reserve for the South African mines. Not wanting to deal with the apartheid South African regime, development agencies isolated the "independent" Lesotho from the regional economy in which it was entrapped in their project rationales and reports. Artificially taken out of this larger capitalist context, Lesotho's economy was described as "isolated," "non-market" and "traditional" and thus a proper target for aid intervention.

Ferguson underscores that these discourses are produced within institutional settings where they must provide a charter for governmental intervention. Any analysis which suggests the roots of poverty lie in areas outside the scope of government are quickly dismissed and discarded since they cannot provide a rationale for state action. And since the capitalist economy is one such area which has been ideologically set outside the scope of governmental action, the discursive creation of a deformed 'native economy' creates the required opening for that intervention.

Ferguson writes that it is not enough to note development's failures; even the project managers initially recognized it as a failure. If that was all Ferguson had done, his book would not have had the influence it did. Asking if development is a failure is asking the wrong question; it ignores the "instrument effects" of what the projects DO do. In other words, we should ask what NON-economic functions does development serve? His answer:

1. It's an "anti-politics machine"; it makes blatantly political decisions about the allocation of resources appear to be "technical solutions to technical problems". Important questions such as the reallocation of land to a limited number (leaving them relatively wealthy, and others in poverty) are rephrased as a "necessity for the sustainable commercial management of livestock." A large proportion of men are deprived of their retirement savings.
2. "Integrated development" served to strengthen the presence of a repressive government in an isolated and resistant area. Development projects are dependent upon local governments for implementation, and rarely challenge the nature of that government. The resources they supply frequently serve state needs more than local needs.
3. It perpetuates the migrant labour system. The project neglected to look at Lesotho in the regional economy with South Africa. Lesotho was a labour reserve for Apartheid-era South African mines. The men of Lesotho were not farmers, but unemployed workers and retirees. Real commercial farming was never a possibility without large subsidies. The project thus served to preserve a pool of cheap labour for South Africa in a time when international sanctions against Apartheid were hitting its economy.

The Limits of Governmentality

Ecogovernmentality

Main article: Ecogovernmentality

Ecogovernmentality, (or Eco-governmentality), is the application of Foucault's concepts of biopower and governmentality to the analysis of the regulation of social interactions with the natural world. The concept of Ecogovernmentality expands on Foucault's genealogical examination of the state to include ecological rationalities and technologies of government. Following Michel Foucault, writing on ecogovernmentality focuses on how government agencies, in combination with producers of expert knowledge, construct "The Environment." This construction is viewed both in terms of the creation of an object of knowledge and a sphere within which certain types of intervention and management are created and deployed to further the government's larger aim of managing the lives of its constituents. This governmental management is dependent on the dissemination and internalization of knowledge/power among individual actors. This creates a decentered network of self-regulating elements whose interests become integrated with those of the State.

Work done by Arun Agrawal on local forest governance in India, is an example of this method of analysis. He illustrates how the production of specific types of expert knowledge (the economic productivity of forests) coupled with specific technologies of government (local Forest Stewardship Councils) can bring individual interest in line with those of the state. This, not through the imposition of specific outcomes, but by creating frameworks that rationalizes behavior in particular ways and involve individuals in the process of problem definition and intervention.

Agricultural development: the "Green Revolution"

The term "Green Revolution" was first used in 1968 by former United States Agency for International Development (USAID) director William Gaud, who noted the spread of the new technologies:

"These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution."

Anti-cult movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-cult_movement

 

The anti-cult movement (abbreviated ACM, and also known as the countercult movement) consists of various governmental and non-governmental organizations and individuals that seek to raise awareness of cults, uncover coercive practices used to attract and retain members, and help those who have become involved with harmful cult practices.

One prominent group within the anti-cult movement, Christian counter-cult organizations, oppose new religious movements on theological grounds, categorizing them as cults, and distribute information to this effect through church networks and via printed literature.

Concept

The anti-cult movement is conceptualized as a collection of individuals and groups, whether formally organized or not, who oppose some "new religious movements" (or "cults"). This countermovement has reportedly recruited participants from family members of "cultists," former group members (or apostates), religious groups (including Jewish and Christian groups) and associations of health professionals. Although there is a trend towards globalization, the social and organizational bases vary significantly from country to country according to the social and political opportunity structures in each place.

As with many subjects in the social sciences, the movement is variously defined. A significant minority opinion suggests that analysis should treat the secular anti-cult movement separately from the religiously motivated (mainly Christian) groups.

The anti-cult movement might be divided into four classes:

1. secular counter-cult groups;
2. Christian evangelical counter-cult groups;
3. groups formed to counter a specific cult; and
4. organizations that offer some form of exit counseling.

Most if not all of the groups involved express the view that there are potentially deleterious effects associated with some new religious movements.

Religious and secular critics

Commentators differentiate two main types of opposition to "cults":

• religious opposition: related to theological issues.
• secular opposition: related to emotional, social, financial, and economic consequences of cult involvement, where "cult" can refer to a religious or to a secular group.

Hadden's taxonomy of the anti-cult movement

Jeffrey K. Hadden sees four distinct classes of opposition to "cults":

1. Opposition grounded on religion
   • Opposition usually defined in theological terms.
   • Cults considered heretical.
   • Endeavors to expose the heresy and correct the beliefs of those who have strayed from a truth.
   • Prefers metaphors of deception rather than possession.
   • Serves two important functions:
     • protects members (especially youth) from heresy, and
     • increases solidarity among the faithful.
2. Secular opposition
   • Regards individual autonomy as the manifest goal – achieved by getting people out of groups that use mind control and deceptive proselytization.
   • Regards the struggle as an issue of control rather than theology.
   • Organizes around families of children currently or previously involved in a cult.
   • Has the unannounced goal of disabling or destroying NRMs organizationally.
3. Apostates
   • Former members who consider themselves egregiously wronged by a cult, often with the coordination and encouragement of anti-cult groups.
4. Entrepreneurial opposition
   • A few "entrepreneurs" who have made careers of organizing opposition groups.
   • Broadcasters, journalists, and lawyers who base a reputation or career on anti-cult activities.

Cult-watching groups and individuals, and other opposition to cults

Family-members of adherents

Some opposition to cults (and to some NRMs) started with family-members of cult-adherents who had problems with the sudden changes in character, lifestyle and future plans of their young adult children who had joined NRMs. Ted Patrick, widely known as "the father of deprogramming," exemplifies members of this group. The former Cult Awareness Network (old CAN) grew out of a grassroots-movement by parents of cult-members. The American Family Foundation (today the International Cultic Studies Association) originated from a father whose daughter had joined a high-control group, and other parents concerned about young adult offspring populated the American Family Foundation's membership.

Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists

From the 1970s onwards some psychiatrists and clinical psychologists accused "cults" of harming some of their members. These accusations were sometimes based on observations made during therapy, and sometimes were related to theories regarding brainwashing or mind control.

Former members

See also: Apostasy in alleged cults and new religious movements

Anson Shupe, David G. Bromley and Joseph Ventimiglia coined the term atrocity tales in 1979, which Bryan R. Wilson later took up in relation to former members' narratives. Bromley and Shupe defined an "atrocity tale" as the symbolic presentation of action or events, real or imagined, in such a context that they come to flagrantly violate the (presumably) shared premises upon which a given set of social relationships should take place. The recounting of such tales has the intention of reaffirming normative boundaries. By sharing the reporter's disapproval or horror, an audience reasserts normative prescription and clearly locates the violator beyond the limits of public morality.

Christian countercult movement

Main article: Christian countercult movement

In the 1940s, the long-held opposition by some established Christian denominations to non-Christian religions or supposedly heretical, or counterfeit, Christian sects crystallized into a more organized Christian counter cult movement in the United States. For those belonging to the movement, all religious groups claiming to be Christian, but deemed outside of Christian orthodoxy, were considered "cults." Christian cults are new religious movements which have a Christian background but are considered to be theologically deviant by members of other Christian churches. In his influential book The Kingdom of the Cults, first published in the United States in 1965, Christian scholar Walter Martin defines Christian cults as groups that follow the personal interpretation of an individual, rather than the understanding of the Bible accepted by mainstream Christianity. He mentions the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Christian Science, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarian Universalism, and Unity as examples.

The Christian countercult movement asserts that Christian sects whose beliefs are partially or wholly not in accordance with the Bible are erroneous. It also states that a religious sect can be considered a "cult" if its beliefs involve a denial of what they view as any of the essential Christian teachings such as salvation, the Trinity, Jesus himself as a person, the ministry of Jesus, the Miracles of Jesus, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Death of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, the Second Coming of Christ, and the Rapture.

Countercult literature usually expresses doctrinal or theological concerns and a missionary or apologetic purpose. It presents a rebuttal by emphasizing the teachings of the Bible against the beliefs of non-fundamental Christian sects. Christian countercult activist writers also emphasize the need for Christians to evangelize to followers of cults.

Governmental opposition

Further information: Governmental lists of cults and sects

The secular opposition to cults and new religious movements operates internationally, though a number of sizable and sometimes expanding groups originated in the United States. Some European countries, such as France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland have introduced legislation or taken other measures against cults or "cultic deviations."

In the Netherlands "cults," sects, and new religious movements have the same legal rights as larger and more mainstream religious movements. As of 2004, the Netherlands do not have an anti-cult movement of any significance.

National or regional anti-cult movements

United States

See also: Ted Patrick, Cult Awareness Network, and International Cultic Studies Association

The first organized opposition to new religions in the United States appeared in 1971 with the formation of FREECOG (Parents Committee to Free Our Sons and Daughters from the Children of God). In 1973, FREECOG renamed itself as the Volunteer Parents of America, and then the Citizens Freedom Foundation (CFF), before becoming the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) in 1984. In 1979, another anti-cult group, the American Family Foundation (AFF) was founded (which is now the International Cultic Studies Association); it began organizing annual conferences, launched an information phone-line, and published the Cult Observer and the Cultic Studies Journal. In 1996, CAN was sued for its involvement in the deprogramming of a member of the United Pentecostal Church International named Jason Scott. Other parties joined the lawsuit, and this bankrupted the organization. A group which included a number of Scientologists purchased the "Cult Awareness Network" name and formed the "New Cult Awareness Network." In the 1970s and 1980s American anti-cultist and deprogrammer Ted Patrick was charged at least thirteen times and convicted at least three times for kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment for his deprogramming activities. In 1980, Patrick was convicted of "conspiracy, false imprisonment and kidnapping" of Roberta McElfish, a waitress in Tucson, Arizona, after accepting US$7,500 from her family to deprogram her.

Europe

In the European Union, the FECRIS (Fédération Européenne des Centres de Recherche et d'Information sur le Sectarisme, English: European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Sectarianism) organization has been active since 1994 as an umbrella for European organizations investigating the activities of groups labeled to be cults or sects.

The European Coordination for Freedom of Conscience, a participating organization in the EU Fundamental Rights Platform, issued a report on FECRIS in 2014, describing the differences between how the organization describes itself and what its key figures actually do and say. It summarized that "activities of FECRIS constitute a contravention of the principles of respect and tolerance of beliefs... [and] is in direct opposition to the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights and other international human rights instruments."

In 2015 FECRIS published a list of its member organizations, personalities and correspondents.

France

See also: About-Picard law, MIVILUDES, and Centre contre les manipulations mentales

Anti-cult organizations in France have included the Centre Roger Ikor (1981–) and MILS (Mission interministérielle de lutte contre les sectes; English: "Interministerial Mission in the Fight Against Cults"), operational from 7 October 1998. MIVILUDES, established in 2002, subsumed some of their operations. FECRIS (Fédération Européenne des Centres de Recherche et d'Information sur le Sectarisme), European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Sectarianism, operates in France and serves as an umbrella organization for anti-cult work throughout Europe. MIVILUDES has been criticized for the broad scope of its list of cults, which included both non-religious organizations and criteria for inclusion which Bishop Jean Vernette, the national secretary of the French episcopate to the study of cults and new religious movements, said could be applied to almost all religions. MIVILUDES officials are under the French Ministry of the Interior as of January 2020. The About-Picard law against sects and cultic influence that "undermine human rights and fundamental freedoms" as well as mental manipulation was established in 2001.

United Kingdom

See also: The Family Survival Trust, Cult Information Centre, and Reachout Trust

In the UK, MP Paul Rose established the first major British anti-cult group called FAIR (Family Action Information and Rescue/Resource) in 1976. In 1987, Ian Haworth founded the Cult Information Centre. Other groups like Deo Gloria Trust, Reachout Trust, Catalyst, People's Organised Workshop on Ersatz Religion, and Cultists Anonymous also grew during the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1968, after a large movement from the public to investigate Scientology's effects on the health and well-being of its adherents, Minister of Health Kenneth Robinson implemented measures to prevent the immigration of foreign and Commonwealth Scientologists into the United Kingdom. One measure was the automatic denial of student visa applications for foreign nationals seeking to study at Hubbard College at East Grinstead or any other Scientological educational institution. Additionally, work permits to foreign nationals seeking employment in Scientology establishments were restricted. These measures were lifted in 1980 after a 1971 investigation headed by John G. Foster believed that the "Scientology ban" was unfair. Despite this investigation, the European Court of Justice ruled that the United Kingdom was entitled to refuse the right of entry to nationals of European Union member states seeking employment in Scientology establishments. Sociologist Eileen Barker believes that three reasons led to the lifting of the "ban": (1) it was unenforceable, (2) it was hard to defend before the European Court of Human Rights, and (3) it was unfair since it was the only new religious movement that received such treatment. In 1999, the Church of Scientology attempted to obtain charitable status through the Charity Commission of England and Wales, but their application was rejected and the Church did not appeal the decision. In 2013, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Scientology chapel in London was a "place of meeting for religious worship" that could be registered as a place of marriage to the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

Austria

In Austria, the anti-cult movement is represented by GSK (Gesellschaft gegen Sekten und Kultgefahren), renamed in 1992 from the Association for Mental Health (Verein zur Wahrung der geistigen Freiheit), founded by psychologist Brigitte Rollett on September 29, 1977, engaged in an information campaign against religious minorities and new religious movements. GSK is a declared member of FECRIS. Between 1992 and 2008, GSK was funded by the state government of the city of Vienna. According to the HRWF report, further financing from the funds of the state government of Lower Austria is non-transparent.

Czech Republic

The Society for the Study of Sects and New Religious Direction (Společnost pro studium sekt a nových náboženských směrů), which is considered by religionists to be an anti-cult movement, has been operating in the Czech Republic since 1993.

Finland

In Finland from 1993 operates organisation U.U.T. (Uskontojen uhrien tuki), Support Group for the Victims of Religions, which is a FECRIS member.

Australia

See also: Nick Xenophon, Stephen Mutch, and Jan Groenveld

Australia's anti-cult movement began in the 1970s with the introduction of NRMs like Scientology and the Unification Church. Deprogrammings occurred throughout the 1970s and 1980s that resulted in numerous lawsuits resulting in a national transition away from deprogramming and toward exit counseling. In 2010, independent Senator Nick Xenophon attempted to enact legislation against NRMs – though primarily against the Church of Scientology and their tax-exempt status – similar to those in France. However, his efforts were unsuccessful.

Australia's main anti-cult organization is Cult Information and Family Support (CIFS), run by exit counselor Tore Klevjer. It was founded by Ros Hodgkins, David Richardson, and nineteen others in 1996. CIFS combats NRMs as well as lifestyle coaches and multi-level marketing schemes; The Advertiser wrote in 2017 that it also represents ex-NRM members. Other groups like Cult Counselling Australia (formed in 1991) exist in Australia to provide exit counseling and educational services.

Russia

See also: Center for Religious Studies in the name of Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons and Alexander Dvorkin

In Russia anti-cultism appeared in the early 1990s since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the 1991 August Coup. Some Russian Protestants criticized foreign missionaries, sects, and new religious movements. They hoped that taking part in anti-cult declarations could demonstrate that they were not "sectarians." Some scholars have shown that anti-cult movements, especially with support of the government, can provoke serious religious conflicts in Russian society. In 2008 the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs prepared a list of "extremist groups." At the top of the list were Islamic groups outside of "traditional Islam" (which is supervised by the Russian government); next were "Pagan cults." In 2009 the Russian Ministry of Justice set up a council called the Council of Experts Conducting State Religious Studies Expert Analysis. The new council listed 80 large sects which it considered potentially dangerous to Russian society and mentioned that there were thousands of smaller ones. Large sects listed included the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, and what were called "neo-Pentecostals."

China

Main articles: Persecution of Falun Gong, Antireligious campaigns in China, and Heterodox teachings (Chinese law)

China's modern anti-cult movement began in the late 1990s with the development of qigong groups, primarily Falun Gong. Anti-cult campaigns in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first centuries were founded on "scientific rationality and civilization," according to medical anthropologist Nancy N. Chen. Chinese authorities claimed that by July 2001 that Falun Gong specifically was responsible for over 1,600 deaths through induced suicide by hanging, self-immolation, drownings, among others and the murders of practitioners' relatives. Chinese authorities adopted the negative term "xié jiào" (邪教) to refer to new religious movements. It is roughly translated by "evil cult," but the term dates as far back as the seventh century CE with various meanings.

About 10,000 Falun Gong protestors on 25 April 1999 demonstrated around Zhongnanhai, the seat of the Chinese Communist Party and State Council, to recognize Falun Gong as a legitimate form of spirituality. In response, Beijing specifically labeled Falun Gong an illegal religious organization which violated the People's Republic of China's Constitution in May 1999. On 22 July 1999, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress specifically banned Falun Gong. On 30 October 1999, the Standing Committee enacted a law that required courts, police, and prosecutors to prosecute "cult" activity generally.

Japan

See also: Unification Church, Aum Shinrikyo, and National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales

Japan's modern anti-cult movement began in the 1980s when numerous groups – though primarily the Unification Church – began soliciting "spiritual sales" from new converts or people on the street. A lawyer's organization called the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales (NNLASS) was formed to combat these "spiritual sales" and supposedly forced donations. According to NNLASS, the group received over 34,000 complaints about "spiritual sales" and forced donations by 2021 totaling to about 123.7 billion yen (US$902 million). According to Yoshihide Sakurai, Japanese courts originally would require religious groups to return large donations if the person never joined the group, but once the person joined the group, their "spiritual sale" was made completely within their own free will and should not be returned. However, lawyers argued that if the person was forced to make a donation, then they were not making it out of their free will and thus their donation or sale should be returned. Based on a 2006 Tokyo District Court decision, the circumstances of whether or not the Unification Church used illegal recruiting or donation soliciting tactics were to be determined on a case-by-case basis, which was upheld by a 2007 appeal.

In 1995, Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese new religious movement, attacked a Tokyo subway with sarin gas, killing 14 people and injuring about 1,000. After this incident, mainstream Japanese society faced their "cult problem" directly.  Various anti-cult groups – many of them local – emerged from the publicity of the "Aum Affair." One of which is the Japan De-Culting Council (日本脱カルト研究会) on 11 November 1995. It was founded by lawyers, psychologists, academics, and other interested parties like ex-NRM members. It changed its name to the Japan Society for Cult Prevention and Recovery [ja] in April 2004.

In 1989, Tsutsumi Sakamoto was an anti-cult lawyer working on a civil case against Aum Shinrikyo. At approximately 3:00 a.m. JST (UTC+9:00), several members of Aum Shinrikyo entered Sakamoto's apartment in Yokohama. He, his wife, Satoko, and his 14-month-old son, Tatsuhiko, were all killed. In the aftermath of the Aum Affair in 1995, some Aum Shinrikyo members and one former member in September 1995 tipped off Japanese police about the general location of the bodies of the three victims, which were scattered to complicate search efforts.

On 8 July 2022, Tetsuya Yamagami allegedly assassinated former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe. Upon his immediate arrest, Yamagami testified that he was driven by Abe's relationship with the Unification Church. Yamagami's mother made large donations to the Unification Church that bankrupted their family. Yamagami's uncle reported that the mother's donations totaled to 100 million yen (US$720,000). This incident brought renewed attention to the social issues related to cults in Japan, which include the questionable religious meddling in state politics, fraudulent fundraising in the name of religion, and the welfare of shūkyō nisei (children of religious family).

Controversies

Polarized views among scholars

Social scientists, sociologists, religious studies scholars, psychologists and psychiatrists have studied the modern field of "cults" and new religious movements since the early 1970s. Debates about certain purported cults and about cults in general often become polarized with widely divergent opinions, not only among current followers and disaffected former members, but among scholars as well.

Most academics agree that some groups have become problematic or very problematic, but they disagree over the extent to which new religious movements in general cause harm. For example, Bryan Wilson, an expert on new religious movements, argued that the Bruderhof Communities are not a cult similar to Jonestown, the Branch Davidians, Solar Temple, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven's Gate.

Scholars in the field of new religious movements confront many controversial subjects:

• The validity of the testimonies of former members.
• The validity of the testimonies of current members.
• The validity of and differences between exit counseling and coercive deprogramming.
• The validity of evidence of harm caused by "cults.
• Ethical concerns regarding new religious movements, for example free will and freedom of speech.
• Opposition to "cults" vs. freedom of religion and religious intolerance.
• The objectivity of all scholars studying new religious movements.
• The acceptance or rejection of the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control report and the brainwashing thesis generally.

Brainwashing and mind-control

Further information: Brainwashing § Anti-cult movement

Over the years various controversial theories of conversion and member retention have been proposed that link mind control to NRMs, and particularly those religious movements referred to as "cults" by their critics. These theories resemble the original political brainwashing theories first developed by the CIA as a propaganda device to combat communism, with some minor changes. Philip Zimbardo discusses mind control as "the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes," and he suggests that any human being is susceptible to such manipulation. In a 1999 book, Robert Lifton also applied his original ideas about thought reform to Aum Shinrikyo, concluding that in this context thought reform was possible without violence or physical coercion. Margaret Singer, who also spent time studying the political brainwashing of Korean prisoners of war, agreed with this conclusion: in her book Cults in Our Midst she describes six conditions which would create an atmosphere in which thought reform is possible.

James T. Richardson observes that if the NRMs had access to powerful brainwashing techniques, one would expect that NRMs would have high growth rates, yet in fact most have not had notable success in recruitment. Most adherents participate for only a short time, and the success in retaining members is limited. For this and other reasons, sociologists of religion including David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe consider the idea that cults are brainwashing American youth to be "implausible." In addition to Bromley, Thomas Robbins, Dick Anthony, Eileen Barker, Newton Maloney, Massimo Introvigne, John Hall, Lorne L. Dawson, Anson D. Shupe, J. Gordon Melton, Marc Galanter, Saul Levine of Mount Wilson FM Broadcasters, Inc, among other scholars researching NRMs, have argued and established to the satisfaction of courts, relevant professional associations and scientific communities that there exists no scientific theory, generally accepted and based upon methodologically sound research, that supports the brainwashing theories as advanced by the anti-cult movement.

Deprogramming and exit counseling

Further information: Deprogramming and Exit counseling

Some members of the secular opposition to cults and to some new religious movements have argued that if brainwashing has deprived a person of their free will, treatment to restore their free will should take place, even if the "victim" opposes this.

Precedents for this exist in the treatment of certain mental illnesses: in such cases medical and legal authorities recognize the condition as depriving sufferers of their ability to make appropriate decisions for themselves. But the practice of forcing treatment on a presumed victim of "brainwashing" (one definition of "deprogramming") has constantly proven controversial. Human-rights organizations (including the ACLU and Human Rights Watch) have criticized deprogramming. While only a small fraction of the anti-cult movement has had involvement in deprogramming, several deprogrammers (including a deprogramming pioneer, Ted Patrick) have served prison terms for acts sometimes associated with deprogramming including kidnapping and rape, while courts have acquitted others.

Responses of targeted groups and scholars

In 2005, the Hate Crimes Unit of the Edmonton Police Service confiscated anti-Falun Gong materials distributed at the annual conference of the ICSA by staff members of the Chinese Consulate in Calgary.

Failure of nomenclature

An article on the categorization of new religious movements in US media criticizes the print media for failing to recognize social-scientific efforts in the area of new religious movements and its tendency to use anti-cultist definitions rather than social-scientific insight. It asserts that the "failure of the print media to recognize social-scientific efforts in the area of religious movement organizations [...] impels us to add yet another failing mark to the media report card."