Analysing non-doctrinal socialization: re-assessing the role of cognition to account for social cohesion in the Religious Society of Friends

Abstract

To incorporate newcomers into membership, a group employs socialization strategies to transform the characteristics of the newcomers, so that it can admit them with the confidence that their behaviour will not endanger group unity. Analyses of socialization emphasize that novices' interiorization of an institutional definition of group behaviour is a necessary condition to ensure successful socialization. The contemporary Religious Society of Friends in Britain, however, is a non-doctrinal religious movement that avoids defining the content of its beliefs and practices. To analyse the socializing interaction between members and newcomers in this movement in Britain, and among co-religionists in the USA, this inquiry applies a model of socialization that does not include assumptions about the role played by cognition in socialization (Long and Hadden 1983). My results show that: (a) the diffuseness in Friends' collective explanations of institutional conduct supports novices' identification with institutional practice, and (b) experimental and affective components in socialization motivate novices to imitate institutional behaviour despite the fact that Friends have no authoritative explanations of such behaviour. The data suggest that socialization and social cohesion are not necessarily as strongly cognitive-oriented phenomena as they were previously thought to be. This finding has important implications for thinking about social cohesion in postmodern society.