Congress as a Deviant Organization: An Application of Ermann and Lundman’s Organizational Deviance Framework

ABSTRACT

In 1978, Ermann and Lundman put forth the most sophisticated organizational deviance framework to date. They conceptualized organizational deviance as actions by an organization that interfere with the flow of benefits to actors with legitimate claims upon that organization. Further, they stipulated that these claims are protected by “controlling organizations.” We apply Ermann and Lundman’s framework to Congress and conclude that it is a deviant organization. We then contemplate the challenges to social control that congressional deviance poses, and contend that the “exempt status” enjoyed by Congress – in that it writes its own rules and polices itself – should be removed.     

To Absent Friends: Classical Spiritualist Mediumship and New Age Channelling Compared and Contrasted

The paper compares Western Spiritualism in the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the Second World War and contemporary New Age channelling. It focuses on one important difference between the two: the presence of physical manifestations of the purportedly supernatural in the former and the absence of such manifestations in the latter. The claim by Spiritualists that they could tangibly manifest the supernatural precipitated conflict with secularising professions and individuals and led to numerous public exposures of mediums. New Age channels continue to be surrounded by opponents. By eschewing physical manifestations and relying solely on verbal communications, channels help to secure themselves from technologically-assisted and media-focused debunkers. Moreover, within the private sphere to which secularisation has confined channelling, the resulting subjectivism is consonant with normative practices within commodity culture and may even increase attractiveness of channelling to certain post-materialist consumers. Consumer culture further assists channelling by supporting the mass dissemination of the cultic milieu.