This article addresses Edmonton secularists’ responses to the emergence of a social justice faction known as Atheism Plus (A+) within the broader secularist movement. I show that some atheist activists express a libertarian rationalism consistent with Enlightenment values to maintain a lifestyle free from collectivist ideologies that promote social justice. The data for this article comes from interviews and participant observation, focusing on three atheist organizations in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I draw from literature focused on everyday lifestyle choices as a form of protest to argue that for some atheist activists, their individual intellectual development takes priority over building a strong collective identity. Given that some scholars claim that atheism perpetuates gender inequality (Amarasingam and Brewster 2016; Miller 2013; Schnabel 2015), this work additionally contributes to our understanding of how atheists conceptualize their activism as sub- and micro-political activities free from community constraints.
Psychology has always been vulnerable to fads, producing its share of psychological movements and therapeutic cults that blur the borderline between science and non-science. It is important for sociologists and other scholars who study the social life of scientists and intellectuals to engage with the content of ideas and to take conflicts about scientific legitimacy seriously. This research examines a debate regarding scientific legitimacy in a qualitative case study informed by Frickel and Gross's general theory of scientific/intellectual movements. The focus will be positive psychology's emergence at the end of the last decade and its failure to persuade the wider psychology community of its necessity due to its use of aggressive framing strategies. Understanding how positive psychology works to establish itself as value-free, objective science, while desiring to be perceived as relevant to the public contributes to discussions about framing and boundaries in science.
We use data from qualitative interviews with forty atheist activists in two Canadian cities to analyze the politics of critiquing Islam in the contemporary political environment. We show that atheist activists struggle to navigate between their criticisms of Islam, their fears of being labeled “Islamophobic” (taken as a synonym for “racist” or “xenophobic”), and their concerns about contributing to anti-Muslim rhetoric. To manage this struggle, atheists rely on stigma management tactics that allow them to hold or express criticisms of Islam without earning racially charged stigmatizing labels. Using these stigma management techniques speaks to the precarious positions of many atheists today as they try to critique Islam without expressing or contributing to prejudicial views against Muslims. This article will interest scholars of religion and nonreligion, especially those interested in the perceived stigmas associated with atheism and stigma management among members of secular movement organizations.
Given the growth of atheism in the Western world (including activist organizations), and atheists becoming more political, it is essential to understand the identities and values that motivate atheist activism. One avenue for exploring these identities and values is through an examination of individual political attitudes. Although the scholarship on atheist activists' political attitudes is limited, some scholars have identified the apparent growth of right-wing sentiments within the US atheist movement (LeDrew 2016). Others have identified a contentious relationship between prominent atheists' political attitudes and egalitarian views (e.g., anti-sexism and anti-racism) (Amarasingam, Amarnath, and Brewster 2016). Of those scholars who have commented on atheists' viewpoints, most emphasize the liberalism of the broader population of atheists. The purpose of this article is to examine the political attitudes of atheist activists in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and highlight a core set of political attitudes and values that atheists share despite intra-movement disagreements about the relationship between atheist identity and political ideology. My findings show that some Canadian atheist activists' share a cluster of liberal and Enlightenment ideals that includes personal liberty, individualism, and an absolutist view of free expression. This article will be of interest to scholars of atheist activism as well as social movement scholars.
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