Hare Krishna In America

by Professor E. Burke Rochford

You have seen them dancing and chanting on street corners or soliciting donations in airports. Their shaven heads, long robes, and sense for the dramatic set them apart from others around them and generate curiosity, sometimes mistrust, wherever they appear. 

Sociologist E. Burke Rochford, Jr., began his study of the Hare Krishna movement in America in the mid-1970s, only to find himself increasingly drawn into the movement even as he struggled to maintain a critical distance. Convinced to wear beads, chant, and take part in religious ceremonies, as well as to move in for occasional stays, Rochford found his new form of devotion a cause of concern for his family, friends, and colleagues. Participation in the movement's activities, however, enabled him to experience from within the forces at play between a society often intolerant of religious deviation and a religion dedicated to the continual recruitment of new followers. 

Rochford uses several different sociological approaches--the life history of a single devotee, analysis of male-female recruitment patterns, surveys of members, and extensive field notes--to present he reader with a vivid portrait of the Hare Krishna movement as it has developed and changed in the first twenty years of its existence. 

Paperback

First published November 1, 1985

Reviews

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

My sister in law gave me this book after she finished it for a college class. It proved to be very interesting. Chapter 3, Who Joins and Why, had me riveted. For instance, most who join were from middle and upper class families. The author uses charts and statistical analysis to present a complete picture of those most likely to find the philosophy appealing. He points out one main reason participants join was the charisma of the Swami, Srila Prabhupada. It is discussed how as the movement grew, it became more diffiuclt for each member to have a personal relationship with Prabhupada. I believe that was the one factor which took the movement from cohesion into chaos. Srila Prabhupada, a pure and God loving soul, was the only one capable of giving true instruction. The more things shifted due to worldwide expansion, the more convoluted things became.

Chapter 8, Change and Adaptation, deals with how ideaologies became compromised in the late 1970's, due to a variety of pressures. Again, aquiring thousands upon thousands of members meant Prabhupada could not be hands on with his gentle guidance. The governing body elected became dogmatic and rigid. The original fun and playful spirit was taxed, and at times lost entirely. As Nietzsche would explain, when something is set up as the highest ideal, it will eventually work to undermine itself.

All in all, I found this book quite fascinating.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author of this book explains that he began his research on the Hare Krishnas while he was a graduate student, and that he was converted to the religion while doing his fieldwork. As someone who teaches a unit on ethnographic fieldwork in an interdisciplinary methods class, I found this aspect of the book worth the time, though not for the reasons the author wrote. The book also draws on social movement theories from sociology to study the Hare Krishnas in a way that is quite interesting. Today, the author is one of the leading academics writing about the Hare Krishnas from a sympathetic point of view as a "new religion" rather than a cult. Rochford has included extensive passages from interviews with devotees so you do get a sense of how people within the religion understand it and why they joined. Despite his argument that HK is / was not a cult, there are examples of behavior in the organization in the 1970s that do seem cult-like, such as attempting to keep members from seeing their family members. The authors' view on these kinds of practices isn't always clear, but since the descriptions are detailed, it allows the reader to make their own judgments.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A SOCIOLOGIST (AND NEAR-DEVOTEE) STUDIES HE "HARE KRISHNA" MOVEMENT

At the time this book was published in 1985, author E. Burke Rochford Jr. taught Sociology at the University of Tulsa. He has also written Hare Krishna Transformed. He wrote in the Introduction, "This case study focuses on the growth and development of ... the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (hereafter ISKCON)...

"The analysis centers on the young people who have joined the movement, on ISKCON's overall development and its career in the American context, and also on the larger society into which the Krishna movement has sought to expand its influence... my analysis centers on the range of processes that have influenced the efforts of the Hare Krishna movement to spread its message and to gain a following." (Pg. 2)

He explains, "The major part of my research on ISKCON has involved participant observation. Over a six-year period, I observed and lived within the Los Angele ISKCON community. During this period, I participated in the Krishna lifestyle and religious practices, and, over a four month period, I worked in the community's school as an assistant ... teacher. On several occasions I also lived for three- and four-day periods in the community's ... program for new recruits, and was thus able both to observe the recruitment process and be subject to it...

"My second source of data is derived from a non-random survey of six ISKCON communities in the United States... in 1980 from a total of 214 adult devotees... The third research strategy I employed was systematic observation. I observed and counted specific behaviors of ISKCON members who were distributing religious texts at the Los Angeles International Airport... When I began my research in the fall of 1975, ISKCON was reaching its peak in America... By the end of the decade, however, ISKCON faced decline... recruitment had dwindled, members had begun to defect, and many... communities faced serious economic problems."

He admits, "After my initial year researching the movement... I felt more at ease taking part in the religious practices of Krishna Consciousness... I wanted to explore my spiritual self as I had never had before. The research experience had not convinced me to join ISKCON, but it did awaken me as a spiritual being... for the most part, I was left alone and allowed to come and go from the community without a great deal of interaction with the devotees." (Pg. 26)

He observes, "Since ISKCON's earliest days, the movement has drawn support almost exclusively from young Anglo-Americans... a large majority of ISKCON's adherents in American are white. Only 20 percent of the movement's ranks are nonwhites, and half of these are devotees who were originally from countries outside of the United States." (Pg. 47)

He adds, "Forty percent of ISKCON's members had participated in the counterculture of the 1960s... Over half of the early converts to Krishna had taken part in the antiwar movement, while only a small percentage of ISKCON members who joined after 1977 were so involved." (Pg. 64)

He also notes, "the use of drugs continues to characterize most of the young people joining ISKCON. Only a small minority of the devotees have never used drugs... nearly two-thirds... had taken LSD at some point prior to joining the movement." (Pg. 66-67)

He admits, "the leaders of some of the movement's communities attempted to limit contacts between neophyte devotees and their families and friends precisely because these ties were seen as threatening to the recruits' continued membership in the movement... some ISKCON communities demanded of their new members a sharp break with their previous life experiences and social relationships as a condition of membership. ISKCON's restrictions in this regard were structured strategically in order to offset the countervailing personal ties that might have acted to constrain participation." (Pg. 81, 83)

He also states, "From the perspective of the devotees who chose to defect from ISKCON in the late seventies because of what they saw as the declining emphasis being place on preaching and missionary activity... their conviction that changing social circumstances should NOT serve as a basis for altering the movement's mission of spreading Krishna Consciousness... at least some of those devotees who chose to defect ... showed themselves to be idealists, unable to reconcile the differences between the organization's practices and the Krishna beliefs given them by their spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada." (Pg. 211)

Although at times the book is a somewhat "dry" sociological study, it is immensely informational, and will be of great interest to anyone studying the Krishna Consciousness movement.