From nation-state to market: The transformations of religion in the global era, as illustrated by Islam

ABSTRACT

This article has three parts. The first analyses how notions of the market and of marketisation have been literally and metaphorically applied to the study of religion. The article argues in favour of thinking consumption as the circulation and exchange of symbols rather than goods, and therefore reintegrates economic phenomena into the fold of history and socio-anthropology. The second part argues that the major transformations of the last half-century are best understood as the shift from a national-statist religious regime to a market regime cast against the backdrop of globalisation. The rise of consumerism as a social and cultural ethos, the spread of neoliberal and managerial ideologies, are the key processes which underlie a major reconfiguration of societies and cultures on a global scale. The third part argues that the important mutations occurring within Islam – as illustrated by Indonesian Islam – demonstrates the heuristic potential of the suggested approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Globalisation and religion
• marketisation
• secularisation
• consumerism and neoliberalism
• Islam

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

François Gauthier is professor of Sociology of Religion at the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, since January 2013, and was prior professor of Religious Studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). His publications include Les recompositions du religieux et du politique. Des fêtes techno à l’altermondialisme (2018) as well as Religion in the Neoliberal Age. Political Economy and Modes of Governance and Religion in Consumer Society. Brands, Consumers, Markets (both 2013, edited with Tuomas Martikainen) and over 50 articles and chapters. His current SNFS funded research projects include the ‘European Efflorescence of Burning Man’ and ‘Ritual Creativity in the Rainbow Gatherings’, and his overarching research interest concerns the recent transformations of religion in light of the rise of consumerism and neoliberalism.

Notes

1 I use capitals for State, Nation, Market, and Global when I am referring to more than the empirical, societal institutions they designate, for instance the idea and ideal of the State as a certain set of values, hopes, worldview, and meanings. Transferred to the discussion on the embedment of the social, I similarly capitalize the names of the National-Statist and Global-Market regimes to mark the difference with the actual nation-state and market.

2 Rudnyckyj (2009) has also coined the term ‘Market Islam’ in reference to the rise of Islamic management seminars in Indonesia and Malaysia. Rudnyckyj's notion embraces explicit phenomena which blend neoliberal ethics and Islamic religious practice and is thus narrower than Haenni's, which aims at qualifying the coherence of a broader spectrum of trends within Islam.

3 My intention here is not to bring any novel data that would impress specialists of Indonesia. My sources are purely secondary. Yet being the largest majority Muslim country in the world, I am struck by how the sources I mention, especially anthropologists, give a portrait of Indonesian religion that corresponds to the model I have been working on. What is also interesting is that these transformations have been ignored by other scholars, namely from Religious Studies and those with a mainly political outlook, who remain entrenched within the secularization paradigm and an essentially political conception of religion and related themes (secularization of Indonesia, the state and religion, compatibility of religion and democracy, etc.).

4 The case of the Gulf countries would require a specific treatment, but there is evidence that the marketization framework would also yield interesting results.

5 Saudi authorities have invested in tourist accommodations and infrastructures, while the demand for the hajj pilgrimage has increased dramatically. Saudi authorities are sometimes at a loss as how to manage some of the new types of practices that have emerged in the last decade, such as self-portraits ('selfies’) taken with cell phones inside the sacred space of the Kaaba shrine.