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Academic Papers about Scientology (continuing cumulative and ongoing thread)

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Academic Papers about Scientology (continuing cumulative and ongoing thread).

I was going to cross-post a single academic paper on Scientology, did a search on WWP to avoid a duplicate thread, and found a thread that not only had the article, but others as well: https://whyweprotest.net/threads/2014-academic-paper-article-dump.119478/

The article links are cross-posted below.



  • The Seeker-Consumer: Scientology and the Rhetoric of Consumerism
    Journal: Journal of Religion and Popular Culture
    Author: Erika Spohrer
    Publisher: University of Toronto Press
    ISSN: 1703-289X
    Issue: Volume 26, Number 1
    Pages: 107-123
    DOI: 10.3138/jrpc.26.1.107
    Date: March 21, 2014
    Abstract:
    This article contributes to the growing body of work on the Church of Scientology, arguing that the Church’s Web site from 2005 to 2010 engages a rhetoric of consumerism. The Church’s site does not merely exemplify consumer capitalism through a haphazard collection of marketing techniques; rather, consumer capitalism is the site’s very language: at the level of vocabulary, syntax, visual design, and site architecture, consumer capitalism is the site’s mode of discursive engagement. In turn, the site’s rhetoric of consumerism crafts the process of spiritual seeking into an act of capitalist consuming.​




  • The Church of Scientology: Legitimacy through Perception Management
    Journal: Politics and Religion
    Author: Max Halupka
    Publisher: ANZSOG Institute for Governance, University of Canberra
    DOI: 10.1017/S1755048314000066
    Date: February 14, 2014
    Abstract:
    In 1967 the Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status was revoked on the basis that it failed to meet the criteria outlined in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service. Between its loss, and eventual reacquisition in 1993, the Church of Scientology employed a number of political based tactics in an attempt to legitimize itself to the public sector. This article explores these tactics in relation to the religion's use of perception management. The article argues that the processes of both legal recognition and legitimization draw upon each other in a new faith's transition to mainstream theology. In this, the Church employed perception management in attempt to influence both processes. In exploring this, the paper contributes to our understanding of role that public legitimacy plays in a new faith's development.​

  • Astounding history: L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology space opera
    Journal: Religon
    Author
    : Susan Raine
    Publisher: Routledge
    ISSN: 0048-721X (Print), 1096-1151 (Online)
    DOI
    : 10.1080/0048721X.2014.957746
    Date: October 1, 2014
    Subjects: Space Opera,Science Fiction,near-death experience,General Semantics,Ole Doc Methuselah,Soldier of Light,Extra-territorial Scienticorps,Past lives,implants,Operating Thetan,exteriorization,Whole track,MEST,Marcab Confederacy,Xenu,fifth invader force,Wall of fire,Incident II,overpopulation,volcanoes,R6,Body thetans,E-Meter
    Places:
    Arsclycus,Helatrobus,Teegeeack
    People:
    Jules Verne,H.G. Wells,Hugo Gernsback,L. Ron Hubbard,Paul Carter,John Campbell,Jack Williamson,Barry Malzberg,Wilson Tucker,Gary Westfahl,E.E. Smith,Brian Aldis,Edmund Hamilton,Iain Banks,David Brin,Alistair Reynolds,Catherine Asaro,Alfred Elton van Vogt,Richard Shaver,Raymond Palmer,Robert Heinlein,Alfred Korzybski,Lewis Padgett,Isaac Asimov,James Blish,Theodore Sturgeon,John Brennan,Stephen Kent,James A. Herrick,Volney Mathison,Gabriel McKee
    Abstract
    :
    L. Ron Hubbard created in Scientology an immense landscape of alternative worlds, realities, and possibilities. Scientology cosmology, mythology, and eschatology are inescapably linked to galactic events and Hubbard's retelling of human history is replete with science-fiction tropes – many of which found popularity in the early science-fiction tradition to which he belonged. In his therapeutic and religious teachings, Hubbard proposed a complex narrative that re-defined the essence of self and society in relation to the cosmos. For Scientologists, the fantastic becomes mundane as they position themselves within a vast and heavy quest to reshape themselves, the rest of humanity, and, for some, the entire universe. Understood within the science-fiction context from which Scientology emerged, one can better understand the grand nature of Hubbard's proposals as belonging to a specific tradition within the genre – namely, space opera. Consequently, this article analyses Hubbard's propositions using space-opera concepts, and argues that Hubbard re-defined a unique tradition in the course of creating a new reality.​




  • Emblematic Architecture and the Routinization of Charisma in Scientology
    Journal: International Journal for the Study of New Religions
    Author: Mikael Rothstein
    Publisher: Equinox Publishing
    ISSN: 2041-9511 (Print), 2041-952X (Online)
    Issue: Volume 5, Number 1
    Date: August, 2014
    Pages: 51-75
    Abstract:
    Departing from a comparative overview, and based on Weber’s theory of charismatic routinisation, this article explores the cult of L. Ron Hubbard in the Church of Scientology with regard to the Church’s developing investments in real estate and impressive buildings. It is argued that Hubbard’s charismatic authority has been transferred to the buildings, and that these potent items of religious hardware (the various constructions), have pushed aside the otherwise attention demanding question of Hubbard’s possible reincarnation, and thus presence in another human body. This focus on buildings and their use, it is argued, allows Scientology’s leadership to rule without being challenged by potential Hubbard-claimants.​




  • Between Law and Religion: Procedural Challenges to Religious Arbitration Awards
    Journal: Chicago-Kent Law Review
    Author: Michael A. Helfand
    Publisher: Pepperdine University School of Law
    Date: May 12, 2014
    Abstract:
    This Essay presented at the Sharia and Halakha in America Conference explores the unique status of religious law as a hybrid concept that simultaneously retains the characteristics of both law and religion. To do so, the Article considers as a case study how courts should evaluate procedural challenges to religious arbitration awards. To respond to such challenges, courts must treat religious law as law when defining the contractually adopted religious procedural rules and treat religious law as religion when reviewing precisely what the religious procedural rules require. On this account, constitutional and arbitration doctrine combine to insulate religious arbitration awards from judicial even on procedural grounds, leaving courts to confirm religious arbitration awards without knowing whether the arbitrators complied with the contractually required procedural safeguards. This outcome - emblematic of the Janus-faced nature of religious law - gives us good reason to reevaluate how U.S. law treats religious law, encouraging us to de-mystify religious law by seeing it more like law and less like religion.​

    Excerpt:
    For example, current litigation between the Church of Scientology and some former members similarly hinges on whether religious arbitration awards met the contractual expectations of the parties or the legally mandated rules that ensure the fairness of the proceedings.​



  • Scientology Inc.: The religion that is in business
    Author: K. H.
    Number of pages: 11
    Class: English 2201
    Teacher: Tracy Follett
    School: Booth Memorial High School
    Date: June 9, 2014
    Intro:
    There are conflicting views on whether Scientology is a religion or a business. There are aspects of it which support the Scientologists beliefs that it is a religion and other aspects which support critics’ views that it is not a religion but a business.

    The views of the founder, the way of their "religious" services, their use of celebrity endorsement and a current ruling, make it hard to see the Church of Scientology as religion but easier to see it as a business.​




  • The “Cult”ure of Scientology
    Author: Marisa Hendrickson
    Number of pages: 16
    Class: English 104
    School: Ball State University
    Intro:

    I became interested in the subject of Scientology in 2004 when my mom told me about a video that she saw of Tom Cruise on
    YouTube. He was talking about what it was like for him to be a Scientologist. Most users that saw the video had no idea what he was talking about, but it was clear that this “Scientology” wasn’t something to joke about. (Wright). After Scientology took the
    video down, claiming copyright, my mom began looking up the religion. At the time, I was in high school and so I didn’t have the time to sit and research the subject like my mom was. Through her, I heard terms like Xenu, E-meter, L. Rob Hubbard, Sea Org, thetans, and even more things that seemed too strange to believe. Finally, I realized that I needed to do my own research about this “religion.”
    After conducting research I’ve determined that The Church of Scientology founded by Science-Fiction author, L. Ron Hubbard, is a cult.​
 

Student of Trinity

Silver Meritorious Patron
The phrase "growing body of work on the Church of Scientology" strikes me as significant. In my own field, at least, people sometimes use phrases like that optimistically, to try to claim significance for their own work on something that is not yet on most people's radar. But you don't say things like that when they just make you look silly. It has to be an immediately plausible statement. So this may not prove that academic interest in Scientology is already hitting high gear, but it shows that a broad academic community is prepared to believe that that may happen. If a mass of academic papers do get written on Scientology in the coming years, most of them will probably be insignificant, but the collective pool of effort and intelligence that will end up getting focused on the problem, from people around the world, could be impressive. Having one geeky grad student gawk at you is like being stared at by a goofy-looking little bird. But get a whole lot of those birds on your case, and suddenly Alfred Hitchcock is calling, Action!

These papers cost some bucks to download. I'm too cheap, I'm afraid. But just the summary of one of them looks interesting. It seems to propose that the Ideal Orgs are a substitute for the return of L. Ron Hubbard; the idea is to transfer his unique charisma to the buildings themselves. Okay, past a certain point this is just academic wackiness. But I think it might have a grain of sense. Hubbard did have charisma, and Scientology was never the same once he faded out of the picture. Maybe it makes sense to think of current Scientology's obsession with material bling — in trophies and luxuries and aspirational architecture — as an attempt to recover that charisma, by paying for it; like a balding Lothario buying a sports car.
 

Gib

Crusader
  • The Seeker-Consumer: Scientology and the Rhetoric of Consumerism
    Journal: Journal of Religion and Popular Culture
    Author: Erika Spohrer
    Publisher: University of Toronto Press
    ISSN: 1703-289X
    Issue: Volume 26, Number 1
    Pages: 107-123
    DOI: 10.3138/jrpc.26.1.107
    Date: March 21, 2014
    Abstract:
    This article contributes to the growing body of work on the Church of Scientology, arguing that the Church’s Web site from 2005 to 2010 engages a rhetoric of consumerism. The Church’s site does not merely exemplify consumer capitalism through a haphazard collection of marketing techniques; rather, consumer capitalism is the site’s very language: at the level of vocabulary, syntax, visual design, and site architecture, consumer capitalism is the site’s mode of discursive engagement. In turn, the site’s rhetoric of consumerism crafts the process of spiritual seeking into an act of capitalist consuming.​

This one got my interest since the author Erika Spohrer, is looking at scientology thru the lens of Rhetoric (or the Art of Persuasion). I will buy this one and read it.

Somebody writing about scientology thru the lens of Rhetoric may be missing the fact that Hubbard did indeed use Rhetoric in compiling dianetics/scientology as Hubbard told his Dean Wilbur in 1936 he would use Wilburs Rhetoric book in the future. And somebody looking in the bubble of dianetics/scientology is missing the viewpoint of somebody who was in the bubble and now has an understanding of Rhetoric and can see the deliberate use of Rhetoric. Which is why I promote here on ESMB this http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/11/14/classical-rhetoric-101-an-introduction/

Here's the abstract:

http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=0146362uv8166376&size=largest

Here is a name from that abstract:

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi:

http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/MarburgJournalofReligion092003-2.htm

edit:

I forgot to include this name in the abstract as well:

Todd S. Frobish

http://ac-journal.org/journal/vol4/iss1/articles/frobish.htm

"A long history of debate over ethos is evident in the rhetorical tradition. The term has been characterized by a tension among what qualities we ought praise and condemn. Aristotle included practical intelligence, moral virtue, and goodwill, in his conception of ethos. The Romans later added concepts such as modesty, temperance, honor, and courage. In the centuries following, the construct has grown exponentially more complex, including more modern concepts such as dynamism and charisma. Ethos is, at its core, a perception—an illusion wrought by a rhetor in selecting appropriate and sometimes inappropriate words, artifacts, and actions, in order to gain the trust of the other. To this extent, Aristotle asserted that "this should result from the speech, not from a previous opinion that the speaker is a certain kind of person" (Kennedy 38)."

Ethos is "If you wish to persuade, you need to establish credibility and authority with your audience."

Hubbard did this by stating (lying) he was nuclear physicist...........:duh:

and many other examples.

The present DM does this by stating the COS has great expansion, see Mike Rinder blog to refute this expansion fallacy.
 
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