Conference Papers & Current Trends
Discussion of Rational Choice Theory
Round 1: Viewpoints from across the Spectrum
A Professor of Religion's Viewpoint
Manuel Vasquez, University of Florida and Wesleyan University's Center for the Americas
Read Gill's rejoinders
First, let me start by saying that I agree with Prof. Gill's general assumption that rational choice approaches are a useful tool for the study of religious behavior. He is right to challenge the untenable notion that religion is irrational or, at the very least, non-rational and that it is purely other-worldly. As Gill states: "although religious belief per se may be placed outside the realm of rationality, leaders of religious institutions are subject to many of the same concerns and constraints as their as their secular counterparts (e.g., politicians, labor leaders). Primary among these concerns is the need for their church to survive and expand .i.e., to preserve the institution and increase membership" (1998:11). If anything, the fact that capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal forms, has become one of the dominant ordering forces in Latin American society should force us to take seriously the notion of "religious economies."
Having said this, I have some serious concerns about the long-term pay-off of rational choice approaches, especially when they are presented as the only rigorous and scientific way to study religion (as in the case of Stark and Finke in The Churching of America). For the sake of space, I will limit myself to two critiques.
Can the rational choice model and its associated religious market approach, which claim particular strength in dealing with micro-behavior, really capture the complexity and polyvalence of religion as it is experienced in everyday life? In a recent essay in Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice (Princeton, 1998), Leigh Schmidt recognizes the importance of rational choice in the study of American religion. However, according to him, "this supply model, focusing almost exclusively on the vending of faith and thus privileging denominational winners in this free market, allows us to see finally only a small part of the complexity of American religious life" (p.72). Focusing largely on "the cultural producers," the "entrepreneurs of faith," rational choice models have "proven of limited use when it comes to the study of popular or lived religion, the everyday exercises of faith within congregations and families, at shrines and grottoes, or in Sunday schools and on the streets"(ibid.).
As an alternative, Schmidt, drawing from the work of Marcel Mauss, proposes a "gift economy model." Such a model "suggests the more complex motivations of religious actors as they meet, associate, sacrifice, struggle, jostle, and contend .with each other and God. The practices and pieties surrounding gifts lead to charged moments of encounter, exchange, and relationship and away from an all-too-rationalized, segmented, individualistic religious market place. The gift economy, far from pointing to a realm independent of the market or somehow above competition, encapsulates the tensile notions of rivalry and altruism, mass commodity and personal inventiveness, calculation and offering" (ibid.).
In other words, it is not that rational choice models are wrong or impious in their insights; it is more that these models provide an extremely limited, one might even say shallow and simplistic, understanding of religious behavior. To quote Schmidt, "the construct of open religious marketplace is not canceled by the gift economy, since competition, display, status, and rivalry are common parts of exchange, but the gift economy, unlike the market model, is not narrowly beholden to the values of salesmanship, growth, and market share. Gifts then, as with any religious practice, are supple and hybrid, positioned on the overlapping borders of self-interest and self-denial, festive play and strategic purpose, spirit and materiality, public and private, sacred and secular" (ibid.).
Now, one does not have to buy Schmidt's gift model to acknowledge his critique of rational choice and religious market models. As a matter of fact, in the Latin American context, the works of John Burdick and Rowan Ireland are models of a fuller, richer approach to "popular" or "lived" religion. In both Burdick's Looking for God and Ireland's Kingdoms Come competition figures prominently but always against the backdrop of complex processes of identity formation and hybridization. Why is this line of critique relevant? Because popular religion (in the shape of traditional popular Catholicism, Pentecostalism, and African-based and New Age religions) is definitely the most common form of religious life in Latin America. I think many scholars of Latin American religion (myself counted!) have made the mistake of concentrating too much on religious movements (base communities and Pentecostal congregations) and institutions (especially church-state relations) and not enough of the more diffuse popular religiosity (and its multiple relations with institutions and movements).
As a result, we have a very partial understanding of religion in the area. Because of their often simplistic, abstract, and ahistorical assumptions, and its exclusive focus on "entrepreneurs of faith," rational choice and religious market models run the risk of reproducing and exacerbating this pattern.
Is rational choice all there is to "religious economies"? Not only are rational choice models limited vis-à-vis popular religion, but they also have some serious problems when dealing with collective actors (i.e., institutions). The religious economy model as deployed by Prof. Gill is built on neo-classical assumptions that free markets are not only normatively better, more efficient, but that they are the default condition of economic practice. Non-free market conditions like monopolies or oligopolies are seen as distortions of a tendency towards the competitive construction of equilibrium.
This assumption is, as the institutional and regulation schools of economics argue, questionable at best. In two papers that will appear in a special issue of the Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Afffairs (Winter 1999), Phillip Berryman and I both argue for an alternative approach to the economics of faith that takes into account institutional habits, modes of regulation, regimes of accummulation, and technologies of production, dissemination, and consumption of religious goods that determine religious strategies beyond the sheer drive to maximize profits (be it membership or market share). While Berryman uses Manuel Castells's recent work on networks, I draw from Aglieta, Lipietz, Harvey, and A. Amin (particularly their discussion of Fordism vs. flexible production and accumulation) to analyze the manner in which religious institutions in Latin America are functioning in an increasingly pluralistic and globalized context.
The point is the same, though: rational choice models are just one approach to religious economies (although in "The Economics of Evangelization," Prof. Gill makes it appear as if rational choice is economic theory!?), and, further, they are one-dimensional and fairly naïve when it comes to the complex processes of institutional production and distribution of religious goods. In other words, scientific rigor need not be sacrificed by the adoption of alternative approaches to religious interests.
Quite the contrary, I find rational choice theory not flexible, comprehensive, or robust enough to make sense of the changing Latin American religious field. We need approaches that situate religious practice within interlocking, overlapping institutional, structural, and systemic logics which include globalization, economic restructuring, transnational migration, transitions to democracy, and the Vatican's new evangelization initiative. I doubt that rational choice's methodological individualism can cope with all this complexity (even if strengthened by game theory, which supposedly addresses "constraints").
In sum, while I think rational choice approaches can help us elucidate some aspects of religious life in Latin America, I am fairly skeptical about the long-term significance of the model. My skepticism is due to epistemological and methodological problems at the heart of rational choice theory, problems that cannot be corrected by the simple "adoption of insights from cognitive psychology, cultural perspectives, or complexity theory," as Prof. Gill optimistically claims (1998: 201). Of course, it is still too early to predict anything and I think we should let this "reseach programme" (Lakatos) test its validity and range.
My sense, however, is that the main pay-off of rational choice will be to confirm and perhaps revise some of the insights already gained through qualitative, ethnographic research and the now classical institutionalist works (See footnote below). Thus far, I don't see rational choice approaches as breaking any new ground. At it stands now, this is a case of much ado about not much.