Choice and Religion: A Critique of Rational Choice TheoryOxford University Press, 1999 - 247 pages "Choice and Religion provides a detailed critique of 'rational choice' to demonstrate that industrialisation has secularised the western world and that diversity, far from making religion more popular by allowing individuals to maximize their returns, undermines it. The claim that competition promotes religion is refuted with evidence from a wide variety of western societies. Bruce also examines the Nordic countries and the ex-communist states of eastern Europe to explore the consequences of different sorts of state regulation, and to show that ethnicity is a more powerful determinate of religious change than market structures. Where religion matters, it is not because individuals are maximising their returns but because it defines group identity and is deeply implicated in social conflict."--BOOK JACKET. |
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Aberdeen Anglican argue autonomy Baptist Basil Blackwell become behaviour belief system Britain British Bryan Wilson Catholic Church Census cent Chapter Christian church attendance church membership Church of Scotland claim clergy commitment Communist congregations conservative religion cult cultic culture decline denomination dissent economic ethnic Europe evangelical evidence example explanation faith figures Finke Finland Free Church gious growth Herfindahl Index human Iannaccone's increased individual Journal Kirk Latvia Laurence Iannaccone less liberal religion Lithuania London Lutheran Church major Methodists modern Nordic countries Orthodox Oxford University Press Pentecostal political popular population Protestantism rational choice approach rational choice theorists recruit Reformation religious market religious movements religious organizations Religious Pluralism religious vitality rewards Rodney Stark Roy Wallis Scientific Study sectarian sects society Soviet spiritual Stark and Bainbridge Stark and Iannaccone Steve Bruce structure Study of Religion supply-side model survey theory tion tradition twentieth century Wales Wallis