Religion and Commodification

Religion and Commodification
Author: Vineeta Sinha
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2011-04-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1136908242

Sustaining a Hindu universe at an everyday life level requires an extraordinary range of religious specialists and ritual paraphernalia. At the level of practice, devotional Hinduism is an embodied religion and grounded in a materiality, that makes the presence of specific physical objects (which when used in worship also carry immense ritual and symbolic load) an indispensable part of its religious practices. Traditionally, both services and objects required for worship were provided and produced by occupational communities. The almost sacred connection between caste groups and occupation/profession has been clearly severed in many diasporic locations, but importantly in India itself. As such, skills and expertise required for producing an array of physical objects in order to support Hindu worship have been taken over by clusters of individuals with no traditional, historical connection with caste-related knowledge. Both the transference and disconnect just noted have been crucial for the ultimate commodification of objects used in the act of Hindu worship, and the emergence of an analogous commercial industry as a result. These developments condense highly complex processes that need careful conceptual explication, a task that is exciting and carries enormous potential for theoretical reflections in key fields of study. Using the lens of ‘visuality’ and ‘materiality,’ Sinha offers insights into the everyday material religious lives of Hindus as they strive to sustain theistic, devotional Hinduism in diasporic locations--particularly Singapore, Malaysia, and Tamilnadu--where religious objects have become commodified.

Religion and Commodification

Religion and Commodification
Author: Vineeta Sinha
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2011-04-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136908250

Using the lens of ‘visuality’ and ‘materiality,’ this book offers insights into the everyday religious lives of Hindus as they strive to sustain theistic, devotional Hinduism in diasporic locations. Relying on primary ethnographic data, the book engages key thematics in the fields of material religion, religion and consumption and visual Hindu culture.

Religious Commodifications in Asia

Religious Commodifications in Asia
Author: Pattana Kitiarsa
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2007-11-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1134074441

This book addresses the growing academic concerns of the market-religion convergences in Asia. Bringing together a group of leading scholars from Asia, Europe, Australia and North America, it discusses multiple issues regarding religious commodifications and their consequences across Asia’s diverse religious traditions. Covering key issues in the anthropology and sociology of contemporary Asian religion, it draws theoretical implications for the study of religions in the light of the shift of religious institutions from traditional religious beliefs to material prosperity. The fact that religions compete with each other in a ‘market of faiths’ is also at the core of the analysis. The contributions show how ordinary people and religious institutions in Asia adjusted to, and negotiated with, the penetrative forces of a global market economy into the region’s changing religio-cultural landscapes. An excellent contribution to the growing demands of ethnographically and theoretically updated interpretations of Asian religions, Religious Commodifications in Asia will be of interest to scholars of Asian religion and new religious movements.

The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion

The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion
Author: Michael Stausberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 881
Release: 2016-11-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191045896

The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion provides a comprehensive overview of the academic study of religion. Written by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first section addresses five major conceptual aspects of research on religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a discussion of the ways societies and religions, or religious organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of resources. Other chapters in this section consider law, the media, nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five reviews important developments, distinctions, and arguments for each of the selected topics. The study of religion addresses religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile of this volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the Handbook references at least two different religions to provide fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This authoritative collection will advance the state of the discipline and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.

Expressing Islam

Expressing Islam
Author: Greg Fealy
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2008
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9812308512

As the forces of globalisation and modernisation buffet Islam and other world religions, Indonesia's 200 million Muslims are expressing their faith in ever more complex ways. This book examines some of the ways in which Islam is expressed in contemporary Indonesian life and politics. Editors from Australian National University.

Consuming Religion

Consuming Religion
Author: Vincent J. Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2005-08-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1623562384

Contemporary theology, argues Miller, is silent on what is unquestionably one of the most important cultural issues it faces: consumerism or "consumer culture." While there is no shortage of expressions of concern about the corrosive effects of consumerism from the standpoint of economic justice or environmental ethics, there is a surprising paucity of theoretically sophisticated works on the topic, for consumerism, argues Miller, is not just about behavioral "excesses"; rather, it is a pervasive worldview that affects our construction as persons-what motivates us, how we relate to others, to culture, and to religion. Consuming Religion surveys almost a century of scholarly literature on consumerism and the commodification of culture and charts the ways in which religious belief and practice have been transformed by the dominant consumer culture of the West. It demonstrates the significance of this seismic cultural shift for theological method, doctrine, belief, community, and theological anthropology. Like more popular texts, the book takes a critical stand against the deleterious effects of consumerism. However, its analytical complexity provides the basis for developing more sophisticated tactics for addressing these problems.

Religious Commodifications in Asia

Religious Commodifications in Asia
Author: Pattana Kitiarsa
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2007-11-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 113407445X

This book addresses the growing academic concerns of the market-religion convergences in Asia. Bringing together a group of leading scholars from Asia, Europe, Australia and North America, it discusses multiple issues regarding religious commodifications and their consequences across Asia’s diverse religious traditions. Covering key issues in the anthropology and sociology of contemporary Asian religion, it draws theoretical implications for the study of religions in the light of the shift of religious institutions from traditional religious beliefs to material prosperity. The fact that religions compete with each other in a ‘market of faiths’ is also at the core of the analysis. The contributions show how ordinary people and religious institutions in Asia adjusted to, and negotiated with, the penetrative forces of a global market economy into the region’s changing religio-cultural landscapes. An excellent contribution to the growing demands of ethnographically and theoretically updated interpretations of Asian religions, Religious Commodifications in Asia will be of interest to scholars of Asian religion and new religious movements.

Brand Islam

Brand Islam
Author: Faegheh Shirazi
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2016-08-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1477309462

From food products to fashions and cosmetics to children’s toys, a wide range of commodities today are being marketed as “halal” (permitted, lawful) or “Islamic” to Muslim consumers both in the West and in Muslim-majority nations. However, many of these products are not authentically Islamic or halal, and their producers have not necessarily created them to honor religious practice or sentiment. Instead, most “halal” commodities are profit-driven, and they exploit the rise of a new Islamic economic paradigm, “Brand Islam,” as a clever marketing tool. Brand Islam investigates the rise of this highly lucrative marketing strategy and the resulting growth in consumer loyalty to goods and services identified as Islamic. Faegheh Shirazi explores the reasons why consumers buy Islam-branded products, including conspicuous piety or a longing to identify with a larger Muslim community, especially for those Muslims who live in Western countries, and how this phenomenon is affecting the religious, cultural, and economic lives of Muslim consumers. She demonstrates that Brand Islam has actually enabled a new type of global networking, joining product and service sectors together in a huge conglomerate that some are referring to as the Interland. A timely and original contribution to Muslim cultural studies, Brand Islam reveals how and why the growth of consumerism, global communications, and the Westernization of many Islamic countries are all driving the commercialization of Islam.

Religion, Consumerism and Sustainability

Religion, Consumerism and Sustainability
Author: L. Thomas
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2010-12-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0230306136

To varying degrees, classic religions are associated with critique of materialistic values. Onto this opposition of the market and the temple other binaries have been grafted, so that 'North' and the 'West' are portrayed as secular and materialistic, 'South' and 'East' either as 'tigers' pursuing western-style affluence and economic growth or locked into retrospective fundamentalisms. These characterisations are called into question in a context of diversity and global movements of peoples and goods. In this collection this complexity is addressed in an analysis of the interconnections between religious and consumption practices and cultures, and the ways in which both are responding to the ecological threat posed by continuous economic growth. International in scope, the book combines empirical and theoretical work in its attempt to interrogate the traditional opposition of spiritual and materialistic values, and to explore the interplay of religious and consuming passions in contemporary cultures. This analysis leads to a consideration of the ways in which religions and secular spiritualities can contribute to a new ecological consciousness, and to the adoption of less destructive and rapacious ways of life.

The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions

The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions
Author: Elliot Cohen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 95
Release: 2021-09-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000457826

This essential book critically examines the various ways in which Eastern spiritual traditions have been typically stripped of their spiritual roots, content and context, to be more readily assimilated into secular Western frames of Psychology. Beginning with the colonial histories of Empire, the author draws from the 1960s Counterculture and the subsequent romanticising and idealising of the East. Cohen explores how Hindu, Buddhist and Daoist traditions have been gradually transformed into forms of Psychology, Psychotherapy and Self-Help, undergoing processes of ‘modernisation’ and secularisation until their respective cosmologies had been successfully reinterpreted and reimagined. An important component of this psychologisation is the accompanying commodification of Eastern spiritual practices, including the mass-marketing of mindfulness and meditation as part of the burgeoning well-being industry. Also presenting emerging voices of resistance from within Eastern spiritual traditions, the book ends with a chapter on Transpersonal Psychology, showing a path for how to gradually move away from colonisation and towards collaboration. Engaging with the ‘mindfulness movement’ and other practices assimilated by Western culture, this is fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, philosophy and religious studies, as well as mindfulness practitioners.