Contrarianism (Razan)

Not to be confused with Contrarianism (Teleon).

In Razanite law, contrarianism is a contemptuous attitude toward law, order, community, and civic duty which motivates conduct that defies, obstructs, or ignores institutions and regulations. Besides sedition, acts of civil disobedience, unauthorized organization of intentional communities, and abstention (most notably failure to vote) were historically codified acts of contrarianism.

The concept of contrarianism has precedent in Razanite case law, which had communal good as a principle since even before the Triumvirate of Razan, and criminalized abstention among the enfranchised Chal patriciate as 'contempt of civic assembly'. It was first codified in the 1873 Contrarianism Act as part of the prosecution of the Contrarian Revolts of 1868 to outlaw the entire reversionist movement in Razan as attempting to secede from Razanite society, and the list of codified acts of contrarianism as known today come from this act, specifically targeting behaviors of reversionist communities.

More comical items on the Contrarianism Act, such as refusal of beverages at banquets conducted according to Berkic custom, were probably never enforced and quickly struck out by revisions in the 1890s, but the authoritarian governments of Razan used abstention as a charge against political opponents well into the 20th century, and 'contrarian secession', ostensibly trying to organize independent communes along reversionist lines, was used to charge unauthorized housing developments, political associations, and actual communes alike. The use of these charges for suppressing political dissent became controversial and increasingly challenged after the 1950s and eventually they were abrogated in the 1970s. The majority of contrarianism charges since the 1980s have been made against public nuisance and disruption of government business, and carry far lighter sentences than before.