Third Way, No Way: Work-life, Religion and the Hollow Language of Love (original) (raw)

Abstract

‘There is nothing inherently wrong with contemporary society.’ At the start of the new millennium, according to Norman Fairclough, this was the effusive logic of New Labour’s ‘Third Way’ project. Style and substance were conflated; appearance was the new reality. Politics was re-presented, mediated, in the everyday as ‘everyday’. By contrast, religious belief is cast by many of its adherents as ‘more than’ words, as meaning that transcends everyday life. This paper is based on PhD research into contemporary work-life as seen through the eyes of twenty Quakers. Whilst the group extol their unity based on shared practice and experience, ‘not on shared words’, investigation into their working lives reveals otherwise. For this religious group, founded on dissenting Christian traditions, has radically shifted its terms of worldly engagement. Whilst organisations have a collective reach beyond the capacity of the mere individual, wider religious goals can be achieved through secular means. But if this engagement requires accommodation of worldly values antithetical to long-cherished principles, how should Quakers proceed? This paper argues that Quaker religious values today are conflated with those of modern work-life. Critical responses are few and opposition is largely self-censored. Piety adopts a secular mask (Goffman). Vigilance is lent more towards managers. And managerialism itself suffers no alternative, compassionate critique. Instead, this hubristic tradition, up against the powerful world of work, turns in on itself; religion as rhetoric, occupying a public and an empty space.

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