Origin Of Norms Research Articles

Organized Religion and Origins of Norms: Evidence from Africa

We argue that organized religion serves as a powerful mechanism of change and subsequent persistence of cultural norms. We use a geo-coded representative survey of African countries and the location of historical Christian missions to estimate a significant and economically meaningful association between proximity to historical missions and anti-gay sentiments today. Using anthropological data on pre-colonial acceptance of homosexual practices among indigenous groups, we show that the establishment of missions, while nonrandom, was exogenous to pre-existing levels of intolerance among local populations. Thus, we argue that our results are indicative of a causal effect of missionary religious conversion. Our study demonstrates that organized religion can facilitate change in norms and values.

What Isn't a Norm? Redefining the Conceptual Boundaries of “Norms” in the Human Rights Literature

AbstractWhat makes the “norm” a distinct concept? How do norms differ from other aspects of the moral and social fabric of society? In this article I argue that imposing stricter boundaries on the norm concept could have significant analytical payoffs, especially in the human rights literature. Greater conceptual clarity on the boundaries of the norm concept highlights three important distinctions: the difference between norms and moral principles, norms and supererogatory standards, and norms and formal law. Clarifying what a norm is (and, importantly, what it is not) improves our analytic equipment and theories, but the inquiry is not purely a theoretical exercise. Clarifying the norm concept enables us to ask new questions about, and rethink old findings on issues like the role of shaming in human rights advocacy, the origins of norms and challenges to their construction, what constitutes evidence of the existence of a norm, and whether, in fact, all human rights have been translated into norms.

What made the modern world hang together: socialisation or stigmatisation?

Contrary to what is often assumed, norm-internalisation does not always lead to compliance. Normative judgements may be simultaneously internalised and outwardly rejected. Non-compliance is at times a result of hyper-awareness of the particular origin of norms, rather than an unwillingness of the would-be-recipients to do ‘good’ deeds, or their inability to understand what is ‘good’. Such is often the case for non-Western states, as I demonstrate in this article by utilising the sociological concepts ofstigmaandstigmatisation. In its inability to acknowledge this dynamic, which has its roots in the colonial past of the international order, the constructivist model of norm-diffusion commits two errors. On the one hand, it falls short as a causal explanation, conflating internalisation with socialisation, and socialisation with compliance. On the other hand, it reproduces existing hierarchies in the international system, treating only non-compliance as endogenously driven, but compliance as a result of external stimuli. As there is a great deal of correlation between non-compliance and political geography, such a depiction, coupled with the fact that most norms under scrutiny are ‘good’ norms, once again casts non-Western states as having agency only when they commit ‘bad’ deeds.

On the Genealogy of Norms: A Case for the Role of Emotion in Cultural Evolution

One promising way to investigate the genealogy of norms is by considering not the origin of norms, but rather what makes certain norms more likely to prevail. Emotional responses, I maintain, constitute one important set of mechanisms that affects the cultural viability of norms. To corroborate this, I exploit historical evidence indicating that sixteenth-century etiquette norms prohibiting disgusting actions were much more likely to survive than other sixteenth-century etiquette norms. This case suggests more broadly that research on cultural evolution should pay greater attention to the role of emotion systems in cultural transmission.