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Religion, Modernity, Globalisation: Nation-State to Market
This book argues that the last four decades have seen profound and important changes in the nature and social location of religion, and that those changes are best understood when cast against the associated rise of consumerism and neoliberalism. These transformations are often misunderstood and underestimated, namely because the study of religion remains dependent on the secularisation paradigm which can no longer provide a sufficiently fruitful framework for analysis.
The book challenges diagnoses of transience and fragmentation by proposing an alternative narrative and set of concepts for understanding the global religious landscape. The present situation is framed as the result of a shift from a National-Statist to a Global-Market regime of religion. Adopting a holistic perspective that breaks with the current specialisation tendencies, it charts the emergence of the State and the Market as institutions and ideas related to social order, as well as their changing rapports from classical modernity to today. Breaking with a tradition of Western-centeredness, the book offers probing enquiries into Indonesia and a synthesis of global and Western trends.
This long-awaited book offers a bold new vision for the social scientific study of religion and will be of great interest to all scholars of the Sociology and Anthropology of religion, as well as Religious Studies in general.
The book challenges diagnoses of transience and fragmentation by proposing an alternative narrative and set of concepts for understanding the global religious landscape. The present situation is framed as the result of a shift from a National-Statist to a Global-Market regime of religion. Adopting a holistic perspective that breaks with the current specialisation tendencies, it charts the emergence of the State and the Market as institutions and ideas related to social order, as well as their changing rapports from classical modernity to today. Breaking with a tradition of Western-centeredness, the book offers probing enquiries into Indonesia and a synthesis of global and Western trends.
This long-awaited book offers a bold new vision for the social scientific study of religion and will be of great interest to all scholars of the Sociology and Anthropology of religion, as well as Religious Studies in general.
332 pages, ebook
Published September 30, 2019
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February 6, 2021
I don't have the expertise in sociology to properly critique Gauthier, but this book was incredibly helpful to me in understanding the recompositions that religion has undergone in recent history. His basic thesis is that since the Protestant Reformation, the Western world has undergone two major transitions in how society and life are regulated: starting from a time where religious institutions determined the lay of life and society, Europe moved to the territorialised standard of the Nation State, a model which gradually then extended throughout the entire world (a process that wasn't totally completed until the end of the 19th century).
However, starting from the 17th century, the commercial revolution brought on by growing international commerce, and especially imports into Europe from the East and the colonies, coupled with growing standards of living for among European social classes, led to a situation where interactions with economic markets, both as buyers and sellers, became more and more frequent for the average person. This economic activity, coupled with the ideologies of neoliberalism, led to a second transition where the former dominance of the Nation-State has been replaced by a globalised market.
In the same way that the form of the Church under Nation-State regime imposed a certain understanding of "religion" (as a matter of belief and belonging to a religious body which is linked to the territories of the nation and the parish -- and Gauthier underlines that pre-Reformation Christianity itself didn't fit this mould), the move to a Global Market has again transformed our understanding, and ways of practising, religion (the Market imaginary has also led to us perceiving *all* parts of life in economic terms, religion is just one of many).
The Global-Market understanding of religion is much more based on practise integrated in daily life and a quest for meaning and identity in an individualised consumerist frame. This has led to major mutations in worldwide practise touching both old and new religious traditions (Christianity certainly, but also Islam, Hinduism, etc, and new religious movements like New-Age practise); they are all picking up on the modes of communication, self-understandings and structures that reflect globalised market enterprises more than traditional religion. Groups that stick to the Nation-State model of terretorialised belonging, belief and institutional modes of authority are, broadly, declining, and those that have moved to a more subjectivised, experiential, lifestyle and personal quest-based vision, relying much more on an ethos of branding, consumption of religious goods and charismatic leadership are flourishing.
There is so much more to Gauthier's thought than a review could come close to summarising, to the point that the greatest critique that I can make of this book that he might have published it as three books instead of one. It probably would have been more approachable (and affordable!) like that, but this just underlines how excellent a resource it is for understanding how contemporary society came to be where it is, and what it's doing to our understanding and practise of religion.
However, starting from the 17th century, the commercial revolution brought on by growing international commerce, and especially imports into Europe from the East and the colonies, coupled with growing standards of living for among European social classes, led to a situation where interactions with economic markets, both as buyers and sellers, became more and more frequent for the average person. This economic activity, coupled with the ideologies of neoliberalism, led to a second transition where the former dominance of the Nation-State has been replaced by a globalised market.
In the same way that the form of the Church under Nation-State regime imposed a certain understanding of "religion" (as a matter of belief and belonging to a religious body which is linked to the territories of the nation and the parish -- and Gauthier underlines that pre-Reformation Christianity itself didn't fit this mould), the move to a Global Market has again transformed our understanding, and ways of practising, religion (the Market imaginary has also led to us perceiving *all* parts of life in economic terms, religion is just one of many).
The Global-Market understanding of religion is much more based on practise integrated in daily life and a quest for meaning and identity in an individualised consumerist frame. This has led to major mutations in worldwide practise touching both old and new religious traditions (Christianity certainly, but also Islam, Hinduism, etc, and new religious movements like New-Age practise); they are all picking up on the modes of communication, self-understandings and structures that reflect globalised market enterprises more than traditional religion. Groups that stick to the Nation-State model of terretorialised belonging, belief and institutional modes of authority are, broadly, declining, and those that have moved to a more subjectivised, experiential, lifestyle and personal quest-based vision, relying much more on an ethos of branding, consumption of religious goods and charismatic leadership are flourishing.
There is so much more to Gauthier's thought than a review could come close to summarising, to the point that the greatest critique that I can make of this book that he might have published it as three books instead of one. It probably would have been more approachable (and affordable!) like that, but this just underlines how excellent a resource it is for understanding how contemporary society came to be where it is, and what it's doing to our understanding and practise of religion.
Displaying 1 of 1 review