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Religion in Consumer Society: Brands, Consumers and Markets edited by François Gauthier and Tuomas Martikainen, Ashgate: Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2013, xiii + 250 pp. ISBN 978-1-4094-4986-7, £65.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4094-4987-4, £65.00 (ebook) Click for updates
Carole M. Cusack
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University of Sydney (Australia) Published online: 27 Aug 2014.
To cite this article: Carole M. Cusack (2015) Religion in Consumer Society: Brands, Consumers and Markets edited by François Gauthier and Tuomas Martikainen, Ashgate: Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2013, xiii + 250 pp. ISBN 978-1-4094-4986-7, £65.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4094-4987-4, £65.00 (ebook), Religion, 45:1, 131-134, DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2014.948766 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2014.948766
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Book Reviews
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Many of the interviews that he quotes substantially and the observations from which he draws his conclusions were conducted two decades ago. Comparison with contemporary data could provide enriching further insight. The reader is given a strong sense of the model Mormon, for Hammarberg focuses on those who are able to follow the strictly organized and controlled ‘path of glory’; not every member may be living up to the ambitious standards set by the church. This book will be a fruitful read not only for scholars from diverse fields interested in religious communities, but also for readers who simply want to know more about the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. The Mormon Quest for Glory is a comprehensive, instructive, and balanced study of a growing religious community with an ever-increasing presence. Marie-Therese Mäder Universität Zürich, Switzerland E-mail:
[email protected] © 2014, Marie-Therese Mäder http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2014.948763 Religion in Consumer Society: Brands, Consumers and Markets edited by François Gauthier and Tuomas Martikainen, Ashgate: Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2013, xiii + 250 pp. ISBN 978-1-4094-4986-7, £65.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-14094-4987-4, £65.00 (ebook). François Gauthier and Tuomas Martikainen’s edited volume evidences a pleasing thematic integration, which is signaled in the ‘Introduction: Consumerism as the Ethos of Consumer Society,’ co-authored with Linda Woodhead. Religion in Consumer Society is positioned as a companion to Gauthier and Martikainen’s previous book, Religion in the Neoliberal Age: Modes of Governance and Political Economy (2013), shifting the emphasis away from the political to the economic sphere. They contend that economics has penetrated all aspects of society and that consumption and consumerism (with hyper-mediatisation and globalism) are the crucial elements of the lives lived by millions around the globe in the 21st century. In classical economics little attention is paid to why people consume; it is sufficient that consumer demand exists to match supplier production of goods. Contemporary Rational Choice Theory (RTC) is also unconcerned by personal motivations for religious consumerism, rather stating that ‘religion behaves – timelessly – as in the formal model of economic theory’ (p. 8). Marketing, in contrast to economics, is highly interested in why consumers consume, and is aware that brands offer authenticity and identity. Neoliberalism often reduces the ‘freedom’ of individuals to choose to consume commodities. Yet consumerism has affective and social dimensions, and these map well onto the transformation of religion that occurred throughout the 20th century. Religion was formerly inherited, institutional, authoritarian, and limited to a small range of recognized ‘brands’ (the so-called ‘world religions’). It has become a matter of personal choice, interiorized and directed towards self-actualization, and new ‘spiritualities’ and religions have proliferated apace in the spiritual marketplace. Individual and communal religio-spiritual needs are met, while vast fortunes are made, as the religious economy thrives, a sub-universe of consumption in the overall neoliberal, global, consumerist network.
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The book is divided into two parts that reflect the dual nature of religion in the contemporary world; the first considers the effects of consumerism on the world religions, and the second investigates the plethora of new spiritualities that have emerged to meet the needs of the new religious consumer. Simon Speck’s essay ‘Religion, Individualisation and Consumerism: Constructions of Religiosity in “Liquid” and “Reflexive” Modernity’ opens Part 1. It is a strong and interesting discussion of two models of modernity that are proposed by Zygmunt Bauman and Ulrich Beck. Bauman’s ‘liquid’ modernity casts fundamentalism as a reaction by ‘failed consumers’ (p. 28) whereas Beck’s ‘reflexive modernity’ emphasizes ‘cosmopolitanism’ and the ‘Citizen Shopper’ (p. 32). Speck vigorously critiques both models, and pleasingly demonstrates the continued relevance of 19th-century theorists Georg Simmel (1858–1918) and Karl Marx (1818–83). Per Pettersson’s ‘From Standardised Offer to Consumer Adaptation: Challenges to the Church of Sweden’s Identity’ follows, with a real-life church to illustrate the theories. The expressed concern of Swedish churchgoers that priorities should be social justice and the care of the aged and sick, and their apparent indifference to church services and traditional activities, are concerns that Christian churches face throughout the developed world. For example, the Australian marketing company, FutureBrand (headed by Angus Kinnaird), was asked to produce a marketing strategy for the Christian religion. They did two years of research and announced that the strategy would ‘keep the church, the Bible and religion well out of the picture’ (Lohrey 2006, 28). What was left? The powerfully attractive human individual Jesus, who was marketed with the slogan ‘Jesus: All About Life’ in 2005. Kinnaird stated that the only tactic for marketing was to focus on Jesus, as ‘[t]he research shows that the church is an almost insurmountable obstacle to the campaign’ (Lohrey 2006, 28). The third chapter, Stephen Ellingson’s ‘Packaging Religious Experience, Selling Modular Religion: Explaining the Emergence and Expansion of Megachurches’ and the fourth, Stefania Palmisano’s ‘The Paradoxes of New Monasticism in the Consumer Society,’ both investigate new religious communities. Ellingson is focused on Protestant, Anglophone material and sketches the growth of the megachurches via American innovations and paradigmatic early exemplars like Willow Creek Community Church, which is an interesting segue to the chapter by Thomas Wagner, ‘Branding, Music, and Religion: Standardization and Adaptation in the Experience of the “Hillsong Sound”’ in a closely related Ashgate volume, Religions as Brands: New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality, edited by Usunier and Stolz (2014). Palmisano’s contribution is in the contrasting realm of Catholicism in Italy, and the new communities she is concerned with are mixedsex, mostly lay administered, and challenge consumer society via ascetic lifestyle choices and ecological activism (which nonetheless involves the members in commoditization in a general sense). Chapter 5 shifts attention from Christianity to other ‘world religions.’ Mira Niculescu’s ‘“Find Your Inner God and Breathe”: Buddhism, Pop Culture, and Contemporary Metamorphoses in American Judaism’ sketches the challenges that modernization and secularization have posed to the Jewish community, and focuses on the turn to Eastern spiritualities in the modern West. Judaism responded by embracing this changed orientation, resulting in the new religious identity of the ‘JuBu’ or Jewish Buddhist (Kohn 2003). Paralleling this development is Judaism’s attempt to revitalize its appeal by marketing Kabbalah to disengaged Jews and non-Jews alike. The final chapter by Francesca E. S. Montemaggi, ‘Shopping for a Church? Choice and Commitment in Religious
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Behaviour,’ is a critique of Rational Choice Theory, focused on Bethlehem Church in Wales. The second part commences with Andrew Dawson’s ‘Entangled Modernity and Commodified Religion: Alternative Spirituality and the “New Middle Class,”’ an examination of the nature of modernity, which Dawson claims is a ‘market-orchestrated, urban-industrial and techno-scientific complex underwritten by structural and social integration’ (p. 131). His methodological speculations lead on to François Gauthier’s excellent ‘The Enchantments of Consumer Capitalism: Beyond Belief at Burning Man Festival,’ which examines an invented religion (Cusack 2010), or at least an invented ritual practice, which espouses a definite anti-consumerist ethic. Gauthier reports that the founder, Larry Harvey, believes that the ‘religious investment of Burning Man is a direct product of the gift economy created by the vending and advertising ban’ (p. 150). Yet, as Gauthier proposes, Burning Man ‘is a (successful) brand in its own right’ (p. 152), and the therapists, reiki healers, meditation teachers, artists, and other practitioners who make Burning Man happen every year are themselves integrated into capitalism and the consumerist cycle. Chapter 9, John S. McKenzie’s ‘Buddha For Sale! The Commoditisation of Tibetan Buddhism in Scotland,’ examines the Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery at Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire, which was founded in 1967 by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Akung Tulku Rinpoche. McKenzie’s focus is on Rokpa Scotland, a Tibetan Buddhist association, and how it negotiates and tries to nullify the effects of consumerism on Tibetan Buddhism in the West. ‘Mutual Interests? Neoliberalism and the New Age’ by Lars Ahlin opens with the Swedish political situation in the mid-1970s, when the Social Democrats had held power for 40 years. Neoliberal ideas and New Age notions were disseminated in the next decade, the 1980s, by the Svenska Dagbladet, a major daily newspaper. Ahlin contends that in the ‘1980s struggle for the public mind there was a need for … New Age ideas. Once neoliberal ideas gained the upper hand, the need for New Age ideas vanished’ (p. 185). Anne-Christine Hornborg’s ‘Healing or Dealing? Neospiritual Therapies and Coaching as Individual Meaning and Social Discipline in Late Modern Swedish Society’ continues the focus on Sweden’s alternative religious and spiritual scene. She charts familiar territory: the decline of Swedish Lutheran church attendance, the rise in the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), people who identify as ‘spiritual’ but not ‘religious,’ and focuses on coaching as a ritual, life-transforming practice. Chapter 12, the final essay in the collection, is Marion Bowman’s ‘Valuing Spirituality: Commodification, Consumption and Community in Glastonbury.’ Bowman uses the phrase ‘valuing spirituality’ (p. 207) to indicate the ambiguities of such an investigation. ‘Value’ might refer to spiritual desirability and efficacy, or it might refer to the consumer economy; in fact, it encompasses both meanings, and more. Bowman’s longitudinal research on Glastonbury enables some interesting observations. For example, she notes that not just what is being consumed but methods of consumption have altered with the rise of ‘virtual’ Glastonbury, whether delivering a petition to the Roman Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Glastonbury online, experiencing Glastonbury initially or even solely through virtual pilgrimage, or receiving goods from Glastonbury through the websites of shops based there. (p. 216)
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Her conclusion that Glastonbury has been transformed in the last 40 years from a working-class manufacturing town to a service-based economy, where approximately 40% of its businesses offer ‘spiritual’ products, is a fitting end to the book, as precisely this transition has been seen across varied Western cultures, more or less. The ideas underpinning Gauthier and Martikainen’s volume are not new, as the seminal article by David Loy, ‘The Religion of the Market,’ was published in 1997, almost 20 years ago. What the collection offers, however, is a more detailed set of empirical case studies that illustrate the depth of the imbrication between religion, spirituality, and the late-capitalist, neoliberal economy. There are some omissions and weak spots, particularly in the area of why people consume, and what consumption means, despite the ‘Introduction’ opening up these topics. The whole oeuvre of Colin Campbell springs to mind, with its emphasis on desire and emulative fantasy as a Romantic legacy, which nevertheless dovetails with the capitalist economy’s demand that citizens consume. His theoretical position is fully articulated in The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (2005 [1987]), but of particular relevance is the chapter ‘I Shop Therefore I Know I Am: The Metaphysical Basis of Modern Consumerism’ in Karin M. Ekström and Helene Brembeck’s edited volume, Elusive Consumption (2004). Yet these are relatively minor criticisms that do not compromise the value of the book; Religion in Consumer Society: Brands, Consumers and Markets is strongly recommended. References Campbell, Colin. 2004. “I Shop Therefore I Know I Am: The Metaphysical Basis of Modern Consumerism.” In Elusive Consumption, edited by Karin M. Ekström and Helene Brembeck, 27–44. Oxford: Berg. Campbell, Colin. 2005 [1987]. The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism. York: Alcuin Academics. Cusack, Carole M. 2010. Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith. Farnham, VT: Ashgate. Gauthier, François, and Tuomas Martikainen, eds. 2013. Religion in the Neoliberal Age: Modes of Governance and Political Economy. Farnham, VT: Ashgate. Kohn, Rachael. 2003. The New Believers: Re-Imagining God. Sydney: HarperCollins. Lohrey, Amanda. 2006. “Voting for Jesus.” Quarterly Essay 22: 1–112. Narrated by Marie-Louise Walker. Victoria, AUS: Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd. Loy, David R. 1997. “The Religion of the Market.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65 (2): 275– 290. Usunier, Jean-Claude, and Jörg Stolz, eds. 2014. Religions as Brands: New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality. Farnham, VT: Ashgate.
Carole M. Cusack University of Sydney (Australia) E-mail:
[email protected] © 2014, Carole M. Cusack http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2014.948766
Dizionario del sapere storico-religioso del Novecento, edited by Alberto Melloni. 2 vols, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010, 1814 pp. ISBN 978-8-815-13732-6 €140.00 (cloth) In its focus on scholarship this Dictionary of the Historico-Religious Knowledge of the 20th Century is different from most other available dictionaries or encyclopedias.
