Is Morality Policy Different? Testing Sectoral and Institutional Explanations of Policy Change

We analyze morality policy change from the perspective of punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) to test whether reform dynamics in this policy sector follow a distinct pattern. First, we propose a new measurement scheme capturing changes in the intensity of morality policy output. Second, we demonstrate that morality policy change is strongly punctuated. Finally, and most importantly, we show that the degree of policy punctuations varies between different domains of morality policy, but not according to institutional features operating on the country level, supporting existing PET research, which has discovered similar domain‐specific dynamics in changes of public spending. Specifically, punctuations are particularly pronounced in areas of manifest morality policy, that is, policies characterized by strong value conflicts, whereas punctuations are less pronounced for latent morality policies, that is, policies in which other dimensions of conflict are present next to the value dimension. Significant differences in reform dynamics are neither discerned for countries belonging to the religious or the secular world, nor for countries with majoritarian or consensual democracies. The analysis relies on an original dataset capturing legislative changes in five manifest (abortion, euthanasia, prostitution, pornography, and homosexuality), and three latent morality policies (drugs, gambling, and handguns) in 19 European countries (1960–2010).     

To Rid the Italian Soul of One Dark Blot: Recognising Race in White Christian Religion

This article describes white Christian missionary uses of racial imagery for assimilating early twentieth‐century immigrants into U.S. society. In early twentieth‐century America, white Methodist missionaries sought to convert Italian immigrants from so‐called “pagans” to “one hundred percent Americans” by distancing them from racial darkness. In their attempt to convert the objects of their evangelism, Methodists syncretised secular marketing and metaphorical images and trained their audiences in a racial conversion narrative. In spite of their effort to combat the racial limitations of perceived Italian darkness, missionaries' use of darkness and light metaphors in conversion narratives reinscribed a racial Manichean dualism in their missionary practices and publications.     

Moving Words: Christian Language and the Modern World

Within the anthropology of Christianity, much attention has been paid to the convergence of Christianity with modern understandings of language. In this essay, I review scholarship that traces the historical connections between modern and Christian views of language, particularly in British colonial attacks on Hindu language practices, and I examine two recent ethnographies that offer different vantage points on the variety of ways in which contemporary Christians use language in a self-consciously modern way.