Zoroastrians in Europe 1976 - 1989
The main aim of this piece of work is to advance the sociological understanding of a religious minority group in Britain. A variety of methodological approaches are used to achieve this end, including theory, qualitative analyses, experiential evidence and quantitative analyses. Essentially the work is analytical and experiential. The problems and interesting anomalies that the author encountered during research work which looked at the British Zoroastrian community from different theoretical perspectives are analyzed.
The concept of symbolic boundaries is introduced and illustrated by experiential evidence from Japanese and other societies. Descriptions of Zoroastrian symbolic boundaries are stated. Symbolic Boundary theories are presented and discussed in detail as is the close connection between symbolic boundaries and ethnic identity.
Two detailed, statistical analyses are presented which address the measurement of the symbolic boundaries of the UK Zoroastrian community and Zoroastrian communities of the Diaspora. The symbolic boundaries of all the Zoroastrian communities were measured in exactly the same way, through attitudes to specific criteria which decree eligibility for initiation into Zoroastrianism and access for outsiders to Zoroastrianism. The scale measuring Zoroastrian attitudes to their symbolic boundaries ranges from strong support for maintaining the status quo to strong support for changing the boundaries.
The results of the statistical analyses of these measured symbolic boundaries suggest that there are certain universal characteristics that all the Zoroastrian communities of the Diaspora exhibit, which explain and predict Zoroastrian attitudes to their symbolic boundaries at consistent, statistically significant levels. These relate to particular religious practices, of which the most important is Zoroastrian attitudes to preferred funeral practices. Also, there are community specific characteristics, which differ from community to community, which explain and predict attitudes to the Zoroastrian symbolic boundaries at statistically significant levels.
From a theoretical point of view these results are very exciting because they demonstrate that symbolic boundaries can cross the most salient boundaries of modern times, at the macro as well as at the micro level. Also, interesting new avenues for research have been opened up, both within the Zoroastrian Diaspora and within other communities in the world.