Religious change in market and consumer society: the current state of the field and new ways forward (original) (raw)
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The Marketization of Religion, 2020
The Marketization of Religion provides a novel theoretical understanding of the relationship between religion and economy of today’s world. A major feature of today's capitalism is ‘marketization’. While the importance that economics and economics-related phenomena have acquired in modern societies has increased since the consumer and neoliberal revolutions and their shock waves worldwide, social sciences of religion are still lagging behind acknowledging the consequences of these changes and incorporating them in their analysis of contemporary religion. Religion, as many other social realities, has been traditionally understood as being of a completely different nature than the market. Like oil and water, religion and the market have been mainly cast as indissoluble into one another. Even if notions such as the marketization, commoditization or branding of religion and images such as the religious and spiritual marketplace have become popular, some of the contributions aligned in this volume show how this usage is mostly metaphorical, and at the very least problematic. What does the marketization of religion mean? The chapters provide both theoretical and empirical discussion of the changing dynamics of economy and religion in today’s world. Through the lenses of marketization, the volume discusses the multiple, at times surprising, connections of a global religious reformation. Furthermore, in its use of empirical examples, it shows how different religions in various social contexts are reformed due to growing importance of a neoliberal and consumerist logic.
Acknowledging a Global Shift: A Primer for Thinking about Religion in Consumer Societies
Implicit Religion, 2013
The starting point of this article is the observation that the new form of cultural political economy, which has emerged in the last half of the twentieth century and become dominant since the 1980s, has had profound consequences for religious belief practice and expression worldwide. The rise of consumerism in the post-Second World War years, accompanied by the ever-growing and globalizing media-sphere, as well as the growing influence of neo-liberalism, have been pivotal in religious change. The article calls for work in this direction, and starts by a critical review of classical works on religion and economy, before surveying contemporary works, in a four-fold typology. Centering on consumerism, the article then argues that the rise of consumerism as a dominant cultural ethos, radicalizes the dynamics of identity and recognition that are typical of modern subjectivisation and community, which in turn shape contemporary religious phenomena.
Despite the many criticisms of the empirical and theoretical adequacy of Rational Choice theory, it continues to have considerable influence and appeal in the sociological study of religion. This article examines the use of the market metaphor and its subsidiary metaphors, with a view to understanding how these metaphors work in rational choice theory, and what this might be able to tell us about its enduring influence. I suggest that the metaphor is a useful one for studying religion in a capitalist, commodity oriented society, but when we forget that the ‘religious economy’ is a metaphor, it comes to serve ideological purposes well suited to the neo-liberal agenda. The market (conceived after a neo-conservative fashion) is thereby naturalized and serves to reinforce the ideology of a one-dimensional society.
Religions as Brands: New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality
Journal of Contemporary Religion, 2015
""During the twentieth century, religion has gone on the market place. Churches and religious groups are forced to ‘sell god’ in order to be attractive to ‘religious consumers’. More and more, religions are seen as ‘brands’ that have to be recognizable to their members and the general public. This interdisciplinary book treats new developments in three fields that have hitherto evolved rather independently: (1) the commoditization of religion, (2) the link between religion and consumer behaviour, and (3) the economics of religion." Contents: Preface, David Voas; Part I Introduction: Religions as brands: new perspectives on the marketization of religion and spirituality, Jörg Stolz and Jean-Claude Usunier; ‘9591’: the global commoditization of religions through GATS, WTO, and marketing practices, Jean-Claude Usunier. Part II Marketing and Branding Religion and Spirituality: The International Christian Fellowship (IFC): a sociological analysis of religious event management, Olivier Favre; Branding, music, and religion: standardization and adaptation in the experience of the ‘hillsong sound’, Thomas Wagner; To order, please visit: www.ashgate.com All online orders receive a 10% discount Alternatively, contact our distributor: Bookpoint Ltd, Ashgate Publishing Direct Sales, 130 Park Drive, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4SE, UK Tel: +44 (0)1235 827730 Fax: +44 (0)1235 400454 Email: ashgate@bookpoint.co.uk January 2014 276 pages Hardback 978-1-4094-6755-7 £65.00/US$109.95 Religions as Brands New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality Edited by Jean-Claude Usunier and Jörg Stolz, both at Université de Lausanne, Switzerland Ashgate AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Series View this title online at: www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409467557 The marketing of spiritual services and the role of the religious entrepreneur, Markus Hero; Non-fortuitous limits to the concept of branding in the popularizing of ‘justly balanced Islam’ in France, Jason Dean; Healing by Islam: adoption of a Prophetic rite – roqya – by Salafists in France and Belgium, Hanifa Touag. Part III Religious and Spiritual Consuming: Adding imaginative value: religion, marketing, and the commodification of social action, Jochen Hirschle; Is there such a thing as religious brand loyalty?, Haytham Siala; How religious affiliation grouping influences sustainable consumer behavior findings, Elizabeth Stickel-Minton. Part IV Economic Analyses of Religious Phenomena: Sources of religious pluralism: revisiting the relationship between pluralism and participation, Roger Finke and Christopher P. Scheitle; Authority and freedom: economics and secularization, Steve Bruce; The ‘business model’ of the Temple of Jerusalem: Jewish monotheism as a unique selling proposition, Philippe Simonnot; Indexes."
The Marketization of Religion: Field, Capital, and Consumer Identity
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TYPOLOGIES OF RELIGIOUS MARKET MODEL
Kim, Yoon Tae 2013 "Typologies of Religious Market Model: an Economic Approach to Religion." King's College London, Theology and Religious Studies. Ph.D. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the economic approach to religion and suggest a new frame for the religious market model. In religious studies, various approaches have been attempted, for example anthropology, sociology and psychology. Recently, some sociologists and economists have started to observe the marketization of religion and to explain religious phenomena or behaviours from an economic perspective. Based on this economic approach to religion, they have made it possible to explain not only marketization of religion but also religious revival in a secular and modern period. In spite of their great contributions to the formation of a new paradigm in religious studies, however, the economic approach to religion has been criticized for its reductionist methodology and basic assumptions. In addition, this approach has been questioned about its main theory, the religious market model. Some people assume that this model can be applied only to a free market situation in the modern period; others assume that it is applicable only to specially secularized regions, such as the U.S. or U.K. Nevertheless, the previous model has often shown some limitations because of the narrow understanding of the religious market. After all, these limitations have left economists of religion unable to explain more diverse religious contexts. Given these considerations, this thesis concludes that the existing religious market model needs to be more comprehensively updated. Therefore, in order to enhance the applicability of the economic approach to religion, I suggest new typologies of the religious economic system, religious market, and religious market structure. Then I examine how they can be applied in an actual religious marketplace through specific cases in South Korea.
Book review: Religion in consumer society: brands, consumers and markets
Consumption Markets & Culture, 2014
One of the key questions that have dominated the contemporary sociological accounts of religion concerns 'whether religion is declining, resurging, or expanding in society'. To address this enquiry, scholars have often referred to the grand narratives of Karl Marx and Max Weber to examine a chain of other closely relevant issues such as: (1) the relationship between the status of religion and the degree of capitalism; (2) the nature of religion as a transcendental or socially-constructed phenomenon; (3) the role of political economy in the process of (de)secularization of society; (4) the interactions between modernity and the traditional norms and forms of the institution of religion. These enquiries have inevitably, in one way or another, embarked upon the notions of consumption and markets to uncover whether or not consumption-related and market-generated practices and values (e.g., consumerism, hedonism, freedom of choice, materialism, individualism, commodification of symbols, and new forms of identity construction) ultimately result in the erosion of religion from the public sphere.