Parliamentary Reports and Their Legal Value
CICNS on the French parliamentary cult reports from Vivien (1983) onwards: official texts deny them normative value, yet courts, administrations and the media use them constantly.
Raphaël Liogier
12 stories
The French Judge Facing 'Cult' Cases
Engineer and CICNS member Éric Bouzou surveys how French courts handle 'cult' cases, drawing on Vincente Fortier's case-law study and testimony from Raphaël Liogier and Laurent Hincker.
Raphaël Liogier on the French Cult Question: A Guide to the 2013 CICNS Interviews
A guide to the four-part 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier: the struggle inside the French State, why dissent on the cult question costs, why television forbids nuance, and his individuo-globalism thesis.
17 July 2026
Laïcité, a Struggle at the Summit — 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (1/4)
Part 1 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: the struggle inside the French State between the field ministries and the laïcité ideologues at Matignon, and the proposal of an independent observatory of spiritual minorities.
1 July 2013
The Wrong Camp: 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (2/4)
Part 2 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: how asking why people believe gets read on French television as siding with evil, and the political cost Emmanuelle Mignon paid for questioning the anti-cult consensus.
1 July 2013
The Impossible Debate: 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (3/4)
Part 3 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: why the cults debate is impossible on television. Anti-cult positioning is a cost-free political resource, and the thirty-second format forbids nuance.
1 July 2013
Individuo-Globalism — 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (4/4)
Part 4 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: his individuo-globalism thesis — every age rests on a mythic ground, secularization does not mean less religion, and new religious movements draw on the emerging individual-global mythic soil.
1 July 2013
"The Judicial System Is Sick" — Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Round Table
English translation of Raphaël Liogier's round-table extract at the CICNS colloquium: the arbitrary versus the authoritarian, unenforceable-yet-enforced parliamentary reports, and his first-hand account of testifying as an expert in a Soka Gakkai discrimination case.
29 October 2011
Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Colloquium (1/2): Defining "Cult", Defining Laïcité
First half of Raphaël Liogier's talk at the CICNS colloquium, in English: how Western Buddhism became a good religion while Soka Gakkai did not, three definitions of the word cult, and laïcité as a contested neutrality caught in a struggle of classifications.
19 April 2011
Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Colloquium (2/2): Why "Cults" Became France's Scapegoat
Second half of Raphaël Liogier's talk at the CICNS colloquium, in English: liberty defined from above (Rousseau vs Locke), education and medicine as the privileged conflict domains, the Longo Maï case, and the declamatory function of the anti-cult law.
19 April 2011
The Springs of the Anti-Cult Fight in France
On Fenech's 2008 appointment, CICNS assembles what Baubérot, Liogier, Morelli, Duval and Maffesoli told it drives the French fight against cults: Gallican surveillance, a classification struggle, a shared cake, and manufactured fear.
1 October 2008
Interview with Raphaël Liogier: Full Transcript
Full transcript of the CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier on French laïcité, state neutrality as intervention, and how 'good' and 'bad' religions are classified.
1 May 2006