ISBN:
9781317067573
Language:
English
Pages:
1 Online-Ressource (269 pages)
Edition:
1st ed
Series Statement:
AHRC / ESRC Religion and Society Series
Series Statement:
AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Ser.
Parallel Title:
Print version Gauthier, François Religion in Consumer Society : Brands, Consumers and Markets
DDC:
306.6
Keywords:
Religion-History-21st century
;
Consumption (Economics)-Religious aspects
;
Neoliberalism
;
Religion and state
;
Religion and sociology
;
Consumption (Economics)-Religious aspects
;
Neoliberalism
;
Religion and sociology
;
Religion and state
;
Religion-History-21st century
;
Electronic books
Abstract:
Presenting an overview of an emerging field in the study of contemporary religion, this book, together with a complementary volume Religion in the Neoliberal Age, explores issues of religion, neoliberalism and consumer society. Claiming that we have entered a new phase that implies more than the recasting of state-religion relations, the authors examine how religious changes are historically anchored in modernity but affected by the commoditization, mediatization, neoliberalization and globalization of society and social life. Religion in Consumer Society explores religion as both shaped by consumer culture and as shaping consumer culture. Following an introduction which critically analyses studies on consumer culture and integrates scholarship in the sociology of religion, this book explores the following topics: how consumerism and electronic media have shaped globalized culture, and how this is affecting religion; the dynamics and characteristics of often overlooked middle-class religion, and how these relate to globalization and differences between 'developed' and 'emerging' countries; emerging trends, and how we understand phenomena as different as mega churches and holistic spiritualistic journeys, and how the pressures of consumer culture act on religious traditions, indigenous and exogenous; the politics of religious phenomena in the Age of Neoliberalism; and the hybrid areas emerging from these reconfigurations of religion and the market. Outlining changes in both the political-institutional and cultural spheres, the contributors offer an international overview of developments in different countries and state of the art representation of religion in the new global political economy
Abstract:
Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Notes on Contributors -- Preface -- Introduction: Consumerism as the Ethos of Consumer Society -- Part I: Changing World Religions -- 1 Religion, Individualisation and Consumerism -- 2 From Standardised Offer to Consumer Adaptation: Challenges to the Church of Swedenâs Identity -- 3 Packaging Religious Experience, Selling Modular Religion -- 4 The Paradoxes of New Monasticism in the Consumer Society -- 5 âFind your Inner God and Breatheâ: Buddhism, Pop Culture, and Contemporary Metamorphoses -- 6 Shopping for a Church? Choice and Commitment in Religious Behaviour -- Part II: Commoditised Spiritualities -- 7 Entangled Modernity and Commodified Religion: Alternative Spirituality and the âNew Middle Classâ -- 8 The Enchantments of Consumer Capitalism: Beyond Belief at the Burning Man Festival -- 9 Buddha for Sale! The Commoditisation of Tibetan Buddhism in Scotland -- 10 Mutual Interests? Neoliberalism and New Age During the 1980s -- 11 Healing or Dealing? Neospiritual Therapies and Coaching -- 12 Valuing Spirituality: Commodification, Consumption and Community in Glastonbury -- Bibliography
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