does the economics of religion just miss the point?
I’ve often heard scholars assert that culture and social structure are really secondary to economics (e.g., see Fukuyama’s discusison of culture in his Trust book). When I hear such arguments, I think: “what about religion?” Religion is present in almost every society. It is a set of ideas that people are willing to do die for. And religious affiliations affect who we marry, how we work, how we vote, and how we live. Yet, it’s hard to chalk religion up to purely instrumental motives. It appears to be a purely cultural, and hugely important, aspect of human culture.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that people haven’t tried. There is the theory of religion as a club good, pushed by Innaconne and others, which asserts that religious behavior (e.g., church affiliation and attendance) is driven by the desire to belong to exclusive groups. In an nutshell, it’s a rehash of Weber’s theory of status groups. Read Innaconne’s summary JEL article here, which explains his approach and many other topics in the economics of religion. It would be crazy to dispute the key insight of the club good theory. Lots of people do join churches because of the social benefits and many denominations are set up to provide social and tangible goods to members. Coleman’s famous article on social capital relied on that crucial observation.
At the same time, the club good theory misses the most important thing about religion: it’s religious!! There is nothing in the theory that explains why groups based on spiritual beliefs should be more common, more successful, or more durable than non-religious groups. If religion is primarily a club good, why not just make a big fraternity and ditch God?
Of course, secular fraternities to do exist but they don’t seem to be a serious competitor to religion. In fact, some groups, such as Middle Eastern populations, have chosen to become *more* religious in the face of secular Western social organization. God is not impressed with club goods. At this point, I think it would be sensible to appeal to social or psychological explanations of religion. Then one might use the club good theory to explain how social or pyschologically created demand leads to “market structure” (attendence, # of churches, etc). Very econ soc, not very neo-classical.
One point in favor of the “club goods” idea is that religiosity is very inversely correlated with country income. There also appears to be a strong substitution between having a Welfare state and religion; which is why America is a key exception to the income rule.
Grouping around religion makes sense if belief sends costly signals about your level of altruism and commitment. Several Middle Eastern groups–Hamas, Hezbollah–in fact illustrate the club goods idea the best.
Thorfinn
January 11, 2010 at 3:40 am
All true, Thor, but here’s the basic point: why God? There have been other types of social grouping, and none of them seem as powerful as religion. Why should supernatural belief/non-belief be the basis of group affiliation?
fabiorojas
January 11, 2010 at 3:43 am
I hate to be the one defending economics in this situation, but…
Anyone who claimed that ‘religion’ is an ‘economic’ issue is clearly an idiot. But I’m not sure that, say, Gary Becker or James Coleman ever would have claimed such a thing. Here’s a quote from Richard Posner defining economics:
About the best one can say is that there is an open-ended set of concepts… most of which are derived from a common set of assumptions about individual behaviour and can be used to make predictions about social behaviour; and that when used in sufficient density these concepts make a work of scholarship “economic” regardless of its subject matter or its author’s degree.
Economists are free to study whatever they like, for whatever reasons they may hold, and with varying results. But I don’t see that this commits them to any ontological account of human society. Evidently, issues such as the meaning of life, death, love and the absolute are not going to be reducible to equations, but to expect as much is in itself probably to miss the point.
Will Davies
January 11, 2010 at 1:01 pm
An interesting approach to the question “why religion?” from social psychology is found in the work of Ara Norenzayan at UBC. See here for an overview of a portion of the argument:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/322/5898/58
Eric Schwartz
January 11, 2010 at 2:52 pm
I can think of a number of (ad hoc) answers for the “Why religion?” question. A principled answer (coming from the relatively small field of the cognitive science of religion) is that as opposed to other cultural bases for the formation of solidary groups religion is memorable and cognitively salient (because it violates natural intuitive biases that evolution equipped us with). So there is really nothing (in terms of ontology and cognitive commitments) like religion. See Atran and Norenzayan (2004) for a recent review of evidence in support of this argument.
Omar
January 11, 2010 at 6:35 pm
eric,
to me the key phrase in your link is “Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans.”
that is, when considering where religion comes from we always have to be cognizant of the fact that many people (and especially our evolutionary ancestors) are neither atheists nor ethical monotheists but some type or other of animists. likewise, even post-Christian modern people often lapse into new age or neo-paganism, as with the revived popularity of the alfar and huldofolk among scandinavians. i see this as decisive evidence for the theory of mind spandrel theory, with ethical monotheism and other “group solidarity” issues being a somewhat fragile cultural development built on the solid ground of a cognitive bias.
note though, in reaction to fabio’s, point, that this doesn’t contradict an economic approach to religion. for instance, stark likes to argue that human nature creates an essentially constant demand curve for religion and so in practice quantity is a supply-side issue.
gabrielrossman
January 11, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Great post! I agree that the economic approach to religion misses the point and fails to take belief into consideration.The question that arises from this is how religion is different from other kinds of belief systems and social groups. Why do people join religious organizations more easily than other kinds of groups (at least at this particular historical juncture)? I’m not sure I buy the cognitive science answer, but it seems to me that one piece of the answer is that many contemporary religious groups like Hamas or Hezbollah are religious and also deeply involved in community activities and politics. So people who join can get all three of those things, if they want.
Bedhaya
January 11, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Will, Let me add to what you said. The economists doing the econ of religion tend to use a substantive (as distinguished from function) definition of religion and religious goods, i.e., that religion deals with exchanges with supernatural beings. An economist of religion would say that insofar as the benefits to be received from these exchanges are scarce, they fall within the scope of economics which, according to some textbooks, is the study of choice under scarcity. In this way of thinking, religion is one of the most long-lived types of economic activity.
Fabio, On your claim that economists are missing the big point… For one, you seem to be assuming something that is debatable, i.e, that explaining why the “supernatural” (religious) clubs persist is an important goal of this literature. I agree that it is interesting question, but I do not think it is one of the most important questions. In fact, one of the appeals of Iannaccone’s original JPE paper was precisely that it applied to more than just religion. So what you see as a problem is more widely perceived as a strength.
That being said, some people have essentially given some forms of answers to the question. Here is the way I interpret their answers… 1. Some goods that people want, especially things associated with the afterlife like salvation via supernatural beings, are generally not thought to be obtainable via natural/secular means. 2. Unless persecution is too severe, religious markets have relatively low entry costs. Anybody can make claims about God and begin preaching. Put 1 and 2 together and you have an active religious market, but there is more. 3. The benefits that people hope to get via religious means do not have close secular substitutes. Hence, as long as people want those things that can be obtained only thru religion, and if the religious groups focus on these things rather than more secular pursuits, then there is the potential for the religious groups to persist.
There’s more to this, but I think this captures the essence of it.
But, after being disagreeable, I pretty much agree with your sentiment. I think the econ of religion has tended to downplay the interesting, otherworldly, component of religion in its focus on the thisworldly components. I’d like to see more work about religious belief formation, etc. Maybe this will happen as the econ of religion work increases in acceptance.
Mike M.
January 11, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Bedhya, I think an econ of rel answer to your question is that religious groups provide certain benefits that are not obtained from secular groups. Religious groups provide many sorts of goods, some are this-worldly like friendship and social insurance that can be obtained thru secular groups too, but some are other-worldly like salvation which is just not obtainable thru secular groups. If someone wants a this-worldly good, they pretty much have to get it through religious practice. And while some religious goods are privately produced (those from prayer and mediation), others come through group interaction, such as institutionalized rituals (eg, baptism). As long as collectively produced goods are demanded, then with low entry costs there should be religious suppliers.
Now, if the question is why do people believe in or want these things, then that is something economists would tend to sidestep (take preferences as given, they would say.) But Iannaccone’s notion of religious capital does address it to some degree in that it thinks of religious capital as something that changes in a person and that affects a person’s demand for religious goods and services. But this is only a partially satisfactory answer because it still doesn’t explain the ultimate source of belief, just changes in belief.
Mike M.
January 11, 2010 at 7:38 pm
That should have read “…If someone wants an other-worldly good, they pretty much have to get it through religious practice.”
Mike M.
January 11, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Omar,
I have to disagree that the reason for religion’s “memory salience” is that “it violates natural intuitive biases that evolution equipped us with.” The conclusion of a divine power – particularly a divine power that is empowered by a feedback loop of belief among your friends and parents – actually fits quite nicely with the jdm lit on cognitive biases.
poliskeptics
January 11, 2010 at 8:21 pm
I don’t think the two hypotheses necessarily conflict. I think the “social feedback loop” mechanism that you mention is more proximate than the “ultimate” mechanism posited by Atran and friends. But notice that for a representation to become part of such a loop, it must have already won the battle against competing representations (as noted by Sperber in his classic 1985 article). Thus, Atran and company would think of your objection as reasonable but also begging the (ultimate question), why is it that this set of representations (positing beings that are everywhere and know everything, are invisible, etc.) became the ones that formed part of this “feedback loop among your friends and parents.”
So on the narrow question of “are counter-intuitive representations more memorable than intuitive ones” the evidence is overwhelming and supports Atran (but naturally we don’t have to accept the evo-psycho explanation for this effect). Of course, whether religious representations are counter-intuitive or not is not a theory-neutral issue. Atran and collaborators have a fairly strong (but actually fairly uncontroversial too) model of the cognitive-system and from this specific cognitive theory invisible beings who transcend the boundaries of time and space are counter-intuitive. I don’t deny that construing the human cognitive system in some other way however, would render what Atran calls counter-intuitive into fairly intuitive representations. But notice that the key issue then becomes our construal of human cognition, and not the narrow empirical question of the memorability of certain sorts of representations.
Omar
January 11, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Part of the problem with the “economics of religion” is that it has become defined by a very narrow subset of economic theories which might be applied to explain the consumption and production of cultural goods like religions. While “supply side” theorists (particularly Larry Iannaccone, who is an old friend) in the Ec. of Rel. seem to claim some unification of this perspective, in fact there are three quite distinct levels of operation (macro markets, mezzo operations of firm units, and micro processes of household level religious capital) with no unified presentation in any formal sense–much less any practical sense.
What is ignored in the hegemonic Ec. of Rel literature is that religious preferences are forced on people through socialization, so choice is less of an issue than most in Ec. of Rel will admit. Second, preferences shift in response to a variety of factors. Just because many may desire some type of supernatural goods (ala Atran), does not mean that they want Jesus or Vishnu or any particular explanation about how humans relate to supernatural agents or options. What you buy with religion are explanations you find valuable about stuff you can’t explain in the real world. The form of explanations you find compelling are going to shift depending on life circumstances. Third, religious consumption and even belief are highly responsive to rewards and punishments in the here-and-now. While supply side purists assume that religious choices are made because people desire the things that they choose (the old Hicksian axiom), in reality people participate in religious groups to garner social rewards quite unrelated to the distinctively religious explanations of the supernatural provided by religious firms.
sherkat
January 12, 2010 at 2:38 am
A recent exchange with Ron Breiger reminds of another answer to the question of “Why religion?” This time coming from Simmel. For Simmel religion was not a “content” but was actually a form (or “style”) of holding a belief. Thus, to be religious is to take something so seriously that you can die for it, sacrifice your well-being for it, etc. So you can be religious about traditional religious content (God, theological precepts, etc.), or (in Simmel’s reworking of Durkheim) you can be religious about Science, your country, etc. This answer of course, makes the “Why religion?” question a tautology, because religion becomes by definition “believing something so strongly that I’ll only be friends with people who believe as strongly as I do.”
Omar
January 12, 2010 at 1:20 pm
We are so accustomed to the duality than we tend always to discriminate between things and feelings. We discriminate between faith and reason, good and evil, working time and free time, science and religion, and so on. In fact the reality, the individual, the life is a whole. When we are engaged both in physical and metaphysical researches we have to use both science and religion. They are like two wings of a bird, and it cannot fly by only one wing. Religion is not something external to human being. It is integral part of the person. So it is not the religion that conditions our marriage, job an so on. In fact it is just the individual – who are stamped inside himself the religion – the one who take the decisions.
The book I have recently written may help in this direction and I want to draw it to your attention. The title is “Travels of the Mind”. It is available at http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TravelsOfTheMind.html
If you have any questions, I am most willing to offer my views on this topic.
Ettore Grillo
Ettore Grillo
January 20, 2010 at 1:07 pm