Existential Insecurity Research Articles

Rising Security and Religious Decline: Refining and Extending Insecurity Theory

Abstract Explaining the reasons—while not the causes—behind religious decline is a central issue for sociologists interested in secularization processes. Many theoretical perspectives have been proposed over the last decades, and this article focuses on one of them. In particular, it refers to the so-called insecurity theory, formalized by Norris and Inglehart (2011), which reads processes of religious decline in light of the increased security coming with modernization. It summarizes the empirical evidence proposed so far by distinguishing between individual and contextual insecurity and static and longitudinal approaches. Moreover, it underlines the difference between economic and existential insecurity as well as the leading role of socialization processes. From this basis, it provides a summary of the main potential weaknesses of the theory and the main criticisms leveled against it, in order to expand its theoretical relevance and clarify what insecurity theory can, and cannot, tell us about secularization processes.

Animal geographies of industrial animal agriculture in the Pandemic Era: the tragedy and insecurity of multispecies ethnography

ABSTRACT Amidst the capitalist logics governing life and death in the industrial production of pigs and poultry in Denmark, we confront the ethico-methodological challenges of conducting multispecies research in this time of increased pathogen emergence and transmission: the ‘Pandemic Era’. Drawing on our empirical insights, we contend that worldly animal geographies in the Pandemic Era are constituted by biological and existential insecurity, underscoring the importance of this work. Through affectively attuning to the bordering devices of biosecurity, we convey the capaciousness of performative understandings of species that industrial agriculture constrains but which animal geographers can advance. Acts of witnessing in industrial agriculture expose the limitations of multispecies ethnography that simultaneously catalyse advancement in the field. Whilst our work reckons with the tragedy of multispecies ethnography in industrial landscapes, the limits we have encountered, from the methodological to the ethical, are incitements to critique and innovate modes of attunement that extend beyond the field of animal geographies itself.

The Cultural Consequences of Market Transition: An Empirical Examination of Rising Materialism in Twenty-First-Century China

This study examines how markets affect personal culture in the context of postsocialist China. Drawing on several bodies of literature, I argue that China’s transition to a market economy promotes materialist values via two causal pathways. First, market transition entails a process of economic liberalization, which accentuates economic incentives and exacerbates existential insecurity. Second, market transition also entails a process of commodification that, by immersing individuals in market relations, crowds out intrinsic motives and normalizes the pursuit of material self-interests. My empirical analysis uses repeated cross-sectional data from a large-scale national survey to demonstrate the effect of market transition through the lens of work values. Taking advantage of China’s regional variations in the pace of institutional change, I show that, between 2005 and 2015, provinces where market transition had made greater progress tended to experience a sharper rise in materialist work values. Additional analyses reveal significant differences in work values between state-sector employees and workers in the market sector, and that the relationship between market transition and materialist values extends beyond the work domain. These findings contribute to the theoretical literature on the cultural consequences of markets and the empirical knowledge on cultural change in contemporary China.

Neo-Prophetism and the Commercialisation of Religion in Ghana

Drawing on the commercialisation of religious items and services by Ghana’s neo-prophetic actors, this paper seeks to draw a relationship between existential insecurity, reliance on religion and associated abuses. The paper brings to the fore the factors that push religious followers to patronise the services of prophetic actors. It contends that a symbiotic dependence between prophetic actors and their followers in terms of what the paper identifies as religious dependence, opportunism and interdependency fuels and fans the commercialization of religion in the Ghanaian neo-prophetic Christianity. The paper also interrogates the ways in which the attempt to meet the demands of religious consumers yields itself to certain forms of violations and abuses. The paper does this via the qualitative approach to research with interviews and participant observation

Existential insecurity and trust during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of Germany

ABSTRACT In many, but not all situations it is easier to be trusting from a position of security. This paper addresses trust’s relationship with perceived insecurities induced by the coronavirus pandemic. Looking at social trust (trust in strangers) and institutional trust (trust in the government and in the public health-care system), we explore whether individuals’ trust is negatively or positively associated with economic fears and health fears. Using panel data from Germany for 2020, 2021, and 2022 we find in cross-sectional analysis that institutional trust – but not social trust – is strengthened by health fears and weakened by economic fears. Longitudinal analysis shows that changes in health fears – but not in economic fears – increase social and institutional trust. Our results indicate that only health fears are threatening enough to suspend the otherwise tight-knit syndrome of security and trust.

Existential insecurity and deference to authority: the pandemic as a natural experiment

IntroductionThe global coronavirus pandemic offers a quasi-experimental setting for understanding the impact of sudden exposure to heightened existential risk upon both individual and societal values.MethodsWe examined the effect of the pandemic on political attitudes by comparing data from eight countries surveyed before and after the worldwide spread of COVID-19 in March 2020 with continuous weekly polling tracker data from the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2021. Multilevel models were used to explore the drivers of change, and the results indicated that reported emotions of fear and stress were positively associated with institutional approval during periods of greater pathogen risk.ResultsOur findings revealed that support for political and technocratic authority, as well as satisfaction with political institutions, rose significantly above long-term historical baselines during the pandemic.DiscussionThe results support the hypothesis that exposure to existential risk results in greater support for authority and that individual feelings of insecurity may be linked to less critical citizen orientations.

Religious responses to existential insecurity: Conflict intensity in the region of birth increases praying among refugees

Do violent conflicts increase religiosity? This study draws on evidence from a large-scale survey among refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria in Germany linked with data on time-varying conflict intensity in refugees' birth regions before the survey interview. The results show that the greater the number of conflict-induced fatalities in the period before the interview, the more often refugees pray. The relationship between conflict and praying holds equally across demographic subgroups. Evidence suggests that both short- and long-term cumulative fatalities in refugees' birth regions affect how often they pray. Additionally, the link between conflict and praying is stronger for refugees with family and relatives still living in their country of origin. Finally, we show that the conflicts that matter are those occurring within the refugees’ specific region of birth rather than in other regions in the country. Implications for existential insecurity theory and cultural evolutionary theory are discussed.

Enchanted companionship of Korean Catholic youth amid compressed individualization

AbstractKorean youth are confronted with “existential vulnerability” in an uncertain labor market. “Compressed individualization” reflects a high‐risk society in Korea's socio‐economic context and acts as the social backdrop for the “privatization of religion.” Despite de‐religionization or the unchurching climate, what are the peculiar features of Korean Catholic youth who are actively participating in a church group? The authors selected five Catholic youth groups and conducted in‐depth interviews with 18 of their members. Highly religious young Catholics demonstrate coping with existential insecurity amid compressed individualization via “enchanted companionship” experienced through prayer, sharing, or service. Despite differences in communal culture between groups, the peculiar features of their enchanted companionship include holistic healing, reciprocal transcendence, and solidarity. Amid the youth's struggles to find their way toward the fullness of life, these communities offer them a “free and gratuitous haven” distinct from secular ties in the utilitarian and disenchanted world. They can also voluntarily discover the significance of life through their activities, reflections, and missions. In sum, this study explains how religiosity is formed through a socio‐existential vulnerability in youth's lived religion at a micro‐level analysis, and signifies enchanted companionship as a key mechanism counteracting the waves of the secular world.

We Were Innovators, but We Gave up: The Muted Digital Transition of Local Newspapers

An important part of journalism is the capacity for continuous development and learning. Today, this mainly concerns technological innovation, and, for newspapers, it means the digital transition. This article explores how local media journalists perceive innovation in their newsrooms and, more specifically, how they handle the challenges of digital transition. The main angle is focused on individuals’ responses to innovation with a qualitative approach that uses in-depth interviews with local journalists in the Czech Republic. The findings, which are based on the typology of individual responses to the existential insecurity of technological innovation, resulted in similar findings as those of other scholars in terms of the characteristics of the types. Nevertheless, most of the responses from journalists at the Czech local newspapers ended in a rejection of the digital transition and nostalgic reminiscence for the old times.

Linguistic markers and basic self-disturbances among adolescents at risk of psychosis. A qualitative study.

Language impairments are key features of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and have also been suggested to signal enhanced psychosis risk. Incoherence, derailment, and monotonous speaking are however closely related to psychosis onset, and thus not very early markers. Recent phenomenologic-psychiatric studies claim that basic self-disturbance (BSD) may represent more useful early markers. We searched for distinctive irregular linguistics of 30 CHR outpatient adolescents, aged 12-18 years. Standard instruments established psychosis risk and BSD. Participants chose three personal and well manifested BSD phenomena. Ninety verbatim statements were analyzed and grouped into higher order clusters of linguistic irregularities. We identified five clusters of irregular language features: distinctive words, describing an atmosphere of unreality; irregular use of prepositions, indicating experiential detachment; shifts of personal pronouns, indicating identity confusion; near-literal use of metaphors and conjunctions indicating existential insecurity, and idiosyncratic use of adjectives indicating perceptual transcendence. The adolescents provided naturalistic descriptions of experiences that were markedly twisted and almost ineffable. This unique irregular "BSD -language" was highly meaningful in its proper context, expressing informative characteristics of first-personal experiential alterations, essential for early detection. The features may additionally represent precursors of psychosis transition, useful for clinical decision-making. Foundation Dam, Oslo, Norway (Grant Number 2017/FO143368).

Introduction to the Special Issue Precarious Labor, Capitalist Transformation, and the State: Insights from Central Asia

The end of the Soviet Union marked a turning point in the radical reconfiguration of labor relations in the post-Soviet world, including in Central Asia. The effects of this “unmaking” of Soviet working life—to paraphrase Humphrey1—were articulated in new capital-labor relations that led to a heightened sense of financial and existential insecurity across large sections of Central Asian societies. Thirty years on, mass labor precarization in the region appears in line with broader trends in the global political economy, where, despite enduring and even significant differences between countries in the Global North and the Global South, “[c]ontingent, precarious, and temporary jobs are becoming the norm.”2

Religious Orientation, Social Dominance and Existential Insecurity in Older Adults of Pakistan

Religious Orientation, Social Dominance and Existential Insecurity in Older Adults of Pakistan

Armed Conflict and Religious Adherence Across Countries: A Time Series Analysis

AbstractA fundamental question in the comparative sociology of religion is: What are the drivers of cross-national differences in religiosity? The existential insecurity argument raises the expectation of higher levels of religiosity in contexts of social crisis. We test this argument against countries’ armed conflict experiences, employing global longitudinal data on religious adherence over almost half a century. We did not find evidence of religious revival when measuring the consequences of armed conflict with a 5-year lag, indicating that armed conflict-related social crises do not tend to lead to sudden changes in the religious adherence of a country. However, we did find more consistent indications of a higher proportion of religious people when using accumulated measurements of armed conflict, highlighting the importance of investigating the armed conflict history of a country when assessing its religious consequences. Our results show that countries with a more devastating experience of armed conflict tend to present higher proportions of religious adherence in comparison with countries with a less devastating armed conflict history. We concluded that armed conflict tends to partially drive religious persistence in societies that have experienced it, and that the pace at which this takes place is gradual rather than immediate.

Accepting the Incomprehensible: What Samuel Beckett Can Tell Psychiatrists Today.

The aim of this article is to propose that reading Samuel Beckett's novels can improve compassionate acceptance of mental phenomena and human behavior deemed incomprehensible. In a narrative inquiry into all of Beckett's novels, we could discern nihilism and existential insecurity as themes both central to Beckett's prose and relevant in working with people with severe mental disorders. By deconstructing narrative structures and struggling to say the unsayable, Beckett can provide a perspective that goes beyond rational understanding. Beckett's prose can extend our imagination of mental and embodied phenomena by describing absurd and incomprehensible aspects of human experience and behavior. His unique sense of humor in dealing with bleak, meaningless situations and the acceptance and perseverance that his characters show in their struggles could help promote compassionate therapeutic relationships and improve clinical teaching in psychiatry. This can help psychiatrists and patients to face the existential aspects of mental illness, "limit situations" according to Jaspers, in a manner both respectful and open to subjective views.

UBI in Times of Crisis: The Net Basic Income Discussing the Case of Germany

Abstract The measures taken to contain the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in, among other things, massive loss of earnings. Many people are therefore increasingly experiencing an income crisis in addition to the acute health crisis. Permanent existential insecurity remains for too many despite the numerous aid packages. The principle of need-based assistance and the determination of need for the provision of aid are proving to be insufficient. In the current crisis, earned incomes are affected most of all due to the measures taken. This leads to an asymmetric distribution of the crisis-induced burdens and thus to an asymmetric distribution of risks and burdens between performance-related and non-performance-related income, which exacerbates the redistribution in favor of capital income. The model of net basic income (NBI) shows one way to come to a solution of these problems in the crisis. Every adult person in Germany receives a monthly unconditional basic income of e.g. 550 Euros (calculated in this approach) during the crisis period. This amount is supplemented by the suspension of rent, lease, repayment and interest obligations during this period of income loss. The amount of money paid to each person is the net share of the crisis basic income. The household savings from suspending rent, lease, principal, and interest payments is the gross. After the crisis, the NBI can be raised to a full participatory UBI as economic momentum increases. In step with this, rental, lease and capital services are to be paid again in full contract amount.

"The greedy I that gives"-The paradox of egocentrism and altruism: Terror management and system justification perspectives on the interrelationship between mortality salience and charitable donations amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why do people give and help others in face of their own mortality salience? The existential struggle with the awareness of death impacts the gamut of human cognition, emotion, and behavior. This multi‐method research (∑N = 1,219) explains the psychosocial impact of COVID‐19‐related mortality salience on altruism. Drawing from terror management theory, two studies tested death‐thought accessibility, mortality salience, and anxiety buffer hypotheses. Study 1 (cross‐sectional survey), using structural equation modeling, confirms death anxiety and fear are predictors of powerlessness and materialism which, in turn, predict charitable donations. Study 2 (between‐subjects experiment) confirms the causal effects of COVID‐19‐induced mortality salience on altruism. Controlling income and socioeconomic status, people in the mortality salience treatment condition indicate greater monetary donations ($), ratio of prosocial (altruistic) to proself (egocentric) spending (%), donation of time (hour), monetary valuation of time (hourly rate = $/hour), and economic value of donated time (hourly rate*hour) than the controls. These effects are mediated by powerlessness. Moderating effects of relevant individual difference factors are significant: the greedier, more selfish, narcissistic, materialistic, and system‐justifying the donor is, the higher monetary donations, volunteer time, and perceived value of donated time are, only when the COVID‐19‐induced mortality is made salient but not in the controls. Environmental and dispositional factors jointly influence vulnerability to mortality salience. The paradox of egocentrism and altruism, as an evolutionarily adaptive protective buffer against existential insecurity for social and cultural animals, can help revitalize resilience, thus shedding some lights on the sociopsychological mechanism of consumers' subjective well‐being. Implications for consumer affairs, social marketers, and policymakers are discussed.

Open schools! Weighing the effects of viruses and lockdowns on children.

This review weighs the risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 against the side effects of school closures on physical and mental health, education, and well-being of those affected by the school closures. Whereas short term effects - decreased learning and food security, and increased anxiety, violence against children, child labor and teen pregnancies - are frequently discussed, the long-term effects of school closures will be much more detrimental across the lifespan of the "Generation Corona": Existing pandemics of inactivity and myopia, already affecting billions of people, are worsening due to less physical exercise and less time spent outdoors, poor diet, weight gain, and increased screen time during lockdowns, causing future increases of stroke, heart attack, cancer, and blindness. Socio-emotional complications of isolation, learned helplessness, economic and existential insecurity will include increased depression and suicide, decreased empathy and increased loneliness. Together with decreased educational attainment and economic productivity, the amount of ensuing increased future global morbidity and mortality justifies immediate action of school reopening.

Meeting the Challenge of Populism to Children’s Rights: The Value of Human Rights Education

AbstractThis article analyses the rise of the new right-wing, nationalistic, xenophobic, and authoritarian populism as a challenge to children’s human rights. Informed by human needs theory, it situates the new populism in the context of globalization, economic grievances, and cultural resentment and backlash against out-groups. Fuelling the rise in support for populism has been growing existential insecurity combined with a lack of effective education on human rights. The outcome, as shown in countries where populism has come into power, has been a threat and an attack on the human rights of children, as described in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. An important means of meeting the challenge of populism, we contend, is comprehensive and robust human rights education in schools, underpinned by education on children’s rights. As called for by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, children’s rights education needs to be integrated into school curricula, policies, practices, teaching materials, and teacher training. Models of human rights education in schools are available and studies have shown positive results in promoting knowledge, understanding, and support for human rights. As described by the United Nations, through providing education about, through, and for human rights, the ultimate goal—yet to be realized—is to advance a culture of human rights. Such a culture would serve as a counter to populism.

Religion and Labor Market Performance: Is It What You Believe or How Much?

A growing corpus of literature has explored the influence of religion on economic attitudes and behavior. The present paper investigates the effect of religion on labor market performance using a novel approach to control for the endogeneity of religion. It proposes contingency experience, individual experiences of existential insecurity, as an instrumental variable of a person’s religiosity. The empirical analysis uses data from a household survey in South Africa specifically designed for this study. The econometric approach is the estimation of instrumental variable ordered probit and linear probability models. Using the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS), the analysis differentiates between effects of individual religious intensity and of religious affiliation. The findings show that individual religiosity, measured in the CRS, has a robust and positive effect on labor market performance. Religious affiliation does not seem to affect labor market performance. The positive effect on religiosity is documented in a set of ordered and binary outcome models across different indicators of labor market performance. The study concludes that the intensity of belief exerts an influence on labor market attitudes and outcomes, while affiliation in religious communities (indicating different content of belief) does not seem to make a difference.

Re-Imagining \u2018Event Management\u2019: on Governmentality and its \u2018Afterlife\u2019

In an important collection of publications Chris Rojek (2013a, 2013b and 2014) raises some apposite questions pertaining to ‘Event Management’ as a source of ideological power that surrounds both the staging of Mega Events and ‘Events’ as a subject field. The present article begins by elaborating on the key themes emerging from Rojek’s unconventional understanding of ‘Event Management’ which provides the backdrop against which it advances its own arguments. The rest of the discussion develops a novel framework of analysis which suggests that we should substitute ‘governmentality’ for ‘ideology’. It is argued that ‘performative governmentality’ achieves the rule of the ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘knowledge’ as the ruling force in a new way, through ‘efficiency’. The article provides a familiar theoretical framework and equips it with some new conceptual tools. Performative governmentality emerges as the ‘afterlife’ of Foucauldian governmentality, demonstrating that its capability is released only when the context in which it originally existed has disappeared, when it lingers precariously on the verge of disappearance. The article posits a mutual ‘fit’ between sport and the ‘social gradient’ in health and the tasks these pose to individuals under the dramaturgical conditions of the ‘performativity criterion’: to produce for themselves in their leisure the knowledge and the techniques of ‘fitness’ or ‘well-being’. Thereafter it explores how control operates with the societal shift from ‘hierarchy’ and ‘normalization’ to ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, arguing that existential insecurity and ontological uncertainty – the products of the fear of invisibility – have become functional to performative governmentality, which appears capable of conjuring conformity through impulses we conventionally associate with empowerment.