Ryan Schram's Anthrocyclopaedia

Anthropology presentations and learning resources

User Tools

Site Tools

You are here: start » religion_and_economy
religion_and_economy

Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

Link to this comparison view

Both sides previous revisionPrevious revision
religion_and_economy [2021/07/01 02:18] – [References] Ryan Schram (admin)religion_and_economy [2021/07/08 00:28] (current) – [References] Ryan Schram (admin)
Line 34: Line 34:
 Arguably this approach is nothing more than a return to the Durkheimian concept of the sacred, which as an elementary form of religion, is basic to all societies. As such, one may wonder if the interface of religion and economy offers any special insight at all. In pursuing religion at the margins, and in the marketplace as opposed to the temple, one could say that we have simply gotten rid of religion as a category altogether. Yet this would be missing a crucial aspect of these contemporary examples and many others like them. People's attempts to collectively realize a particular moral and cosmological vision of the world, to communicate what they believe and how they see themselves, starts with an effort to classify the world into sacred and profane, and ultimately creates objects and situations which are both at the same time. Weber's concept of worldly asceticism is perhaps one such hybrid. His mistake, however, was two-fold: He thought it was a unique development, and he thought it resulted from rational application of moral ideas to material concerns. Rather we can now see that alongside his Calvinist entrepreneurs are many others, as many as there are devices for creating sacred spaces. These hybrids of religion and economy are important not for what ideas they represent, but what kinds of moral thinking they facilitate, and the ways in which they serve as sites at which people can recognize each other as moral subjects. Arguably this approach is nothing more than a return to the Durkheimian concept of the sacred, which as an elementary form of religion, is basic to all societies. As such, one may wonder if the interface of religion and economy offers any special insight at all. In pursuing religion at the margins, and in the marketplace as opposed to the temple, one could say that we have simply gotten rid of religion as a category altogether. Yet this would be missing a crucial aspect of these contemporary examples and many others like them. People's attempts to collectively realize a particular moral and cosmological vision of the world, to communicate what they believe and how they see themselves, starts with an effort to classify the world into sacred and profane, and ultimately creates objects and situations which are both at the same time. Weber's concept of worldly asceticism is perhaps one such hybrid. His mistake, however, was two-fold: He thought it was a unique development, and he thought it resulted from rational application of moral ideas to material concerns. Rather we can now see that alongside his Calvinist entrepreneurs are many others, as many as there are devices for creating sacred spaces. These hybrids of religion and economy are important not for what ideas they represent, but what kinds of moral thinking they facilitate, and the ways in which they serve as sites at which people can recognize each other as moral subjects.
  
-## References ##+## References 
  
 Asad, Talal. 1983. “Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz.” Man 18 (2): 237–59. doi:10.2307/2801433. Asad, Talal. 1983. “Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz.” Man 18 (2): 237–59. doi:10.2307/2801433.
religion_and_economy.1625131084.txt.gz · Last modified: 2021/07/01 02:18 by Ryan Schram (admin)