Doing Ideology Amid a Crisis

Abstract

Based on an interactionist framework, this article examines how followers of a contemporary Chinese religious movement, Falun Gong, deal with a crisis situation and sustain their conviction in the absence of their charismatic leader. Data were collected during a yearlong ethnography of the Falun Gong in Chicago and Hong Kong. The findings reveal that followers experienced cognitive dissonance as a result of the Chinese authorities’ suppression and their leader’s disappearance. To cope with the external and internal threats, they engaged in frequent collective actions and discourses. These collective exercises allowed them to act out their shared ideology, reaffirm their ideological mentality, and activate their ideological passion. Through interaction and collective interpretation, followers not only reconstructed meanings out of the confusion, they also romanticized the charisma of their missing leader. This article asserts the critical role of doing ideology in sustaining a movement and integrates an interactionist, social psychological approach into the literature of social movements.