Pastors of profit: Marketplace Ministries and the rhetorical acquisition of affective allegiance

ABSTRACT

This essay explores neoliberal capital accumulation by analyzing the workplace chaplaincy service Marketplace Ministries. By extending the value of traditional chaplains to the modern workplace, Marketplace Ministries discourse illuminates a discursive pattern that secular client-companies can employ to acquire the affective allegiance of their front-line employees. For these client-companies, affective allegiance activates a set of internal motivational strategies organized around the secularization of Michel Foucault’s pastoral power by penetrating the intimate domestic spheres of the workforce to shape subjectivity and promote new forms of obedience. Implications for our present milieu are considered including possible sites of contestation and resistance.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective allegiance
• labor
• neoliberalism
• pastoral power

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Addie Winslow, Matthew Koschmann, Ray McCormick, Robert DeChaine, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful help in the development of this article. A version of this article won the award for Top Paper at the 28th Annual David C. Bicker Communication Ethics Conference at Azusa Pacific University in 2016.

Notes

1. “Annual Report,” Marketplace Ministries INC., http://marketplaceministries.com/annual-report/ (accessed November 2, 2015); “FAQs”, MarketplaceChaplainsUSA, http://mchapusa.com/faqs/ (accessed November 2, 2015).

2. “Overview” Marketplace Ministries INC., http://marketplaceministries.com/aboutus-overview/ (accessed November 2, 2015).

3. “About Marketplace Chaplains,” MarketplaceChaplainsUSA, http://mchapusa.com/about-us/ (accessed August 6, 2016); “Media—Management, ‘U.S. News & World Report’,” Marketplace Ministries INC., http://marketplaceministries.com/media/ (accessed November 2, 2015); Gil Stricklin, Chaplain (Plano, TX: MMI Publishing, 2014), 96–8.

4. “Benefits,” MarketplaceChaplainsUSA, http://mchapusa.com/benefits/ (accessed November 2, 2015); “Services,” MarketplaceChaplainsUSA, http://mchapusa.com/services/ (accessed November 2, 2015).

5. “Spring Break 2015 May Mean Little Help for Stressed Employees in America’s Workforce,” MarketplaceChaplainsUSA, http://mchapusa.com/spring-break-2015-may-mean-little-help-for-stressed-employees-in-americas-workforce/ (last modified June 13, 2015).

6. David W. Miller, God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 6, 91

7. “FAQs.” Also see “Lay Your Burdens Down on Company Time, The Virginian-Pilot,” Marketplace Ministries INC., http://marketplaceministries.com/media/ (accessed August 1, 2015); and “Business Journal, ‘Buffalo Business First’,” Marketplace Ministries INC., http://marketplaceministries.com/media/ (accessed August 1, 2015).

8. Gil Stricklin, Chaplain, 95.

9. Lawrence Grossberg, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 20.

10. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College De France, 1978–1979 (New York: Picador, 2008), 220, 232.

11. John Clarke, New Times and Old Enemies: Essays on Cultural Studies in America (New York: HarperCollins Academic, 1991), 66.

12. Ibid., 59; Ronald Walter Greene, “Y Movies: Film and the Modernization of Pastoral Power,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2 (2005): 30–1.

13. Greene, “Y Movies,” 30.

14. Catherine Chaput, “The Rhetorical Situation and the Battle for Public Sentiment: How Friedman Overtook Galbraith at the Dawn of Neoliberalism,” in Communication and the Economy: History, Value, and Agency, ed. Joshua S. Hanan and Mark Hayward (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 204–5; David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 141–72; Joshua S. Hanan, “Home is Where the Capital is: The Culture of Real Estate in an Era of Control Societies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 7 (2010): 181.

15. David Carlone, “The Contradictions of Communicative Labor in Service Work,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 5 (2008): 159; Dana Cloud, “Fighting Words: Labor and the Limits of Communication at Staley, 1993 to 1996,” Management Communication Quarterly 18 (2005): 513; Melissa Gregg, “Learning to (Love) Labour: Production Cultures and the Affective Turn,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6 (2009): 212; Michelle Rodino-Colocino, “Geek Jeremiads: Speaking the Crisis of Job Loss by Opposing Offshored and H-1B Labor,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 9 (2012): 24.

16. Miller, God at Work, 69–70.

17. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America (New York: Basic, 1982); Clarke, New Times and Old Enemies, 143.

18. Clarke, New Times and Old Enemies, 136–7.

19. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 216–7; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 23.

20. Clarke, New Times and Old Enemies, 174.

21. Gregg, “Learning to (Love) Labour,” 211.

22. Clarke, New Times and Old Enemies, 52–6; Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 227–31.

23. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 244.

24. James Aune, Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness (New York: Guilford, 2001); Greene, “Y Movies,” 32.

25. Gregg, “Learning to (Love) Labour,” 209; Rodino-Colocino, “Geek Jeremiads,” 22–3.

26. Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 1–2.

27. Lawrence Grossberg, “Interview with Lawrence Grossberg,” Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies 10, no. 1 (2013): 85.

28. Seigworth and Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” 1.

29. Lawrence Grossberg, “Affect’s Future: Rediscovering the Virtual in the Actual,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 324–6.

30. Seigworth and Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” 5.

31. Michael Kaplan, “The Communicative Efficacy of Markets,” in Communication and the Economy: History, Value, and Agency, ed. Joshua S. Hanan and Mark Hayward (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 129.

32. Elspeth Probyn, “Writing Shame,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 74.

33. Carlone, “The Contradictions of Communicative Labor,” 161; Cloud, “Laboring Under,” 270.

34. Joshua S. Hanan, “From Economic Rhetoric to Economic Imaginaries: A Critical Genealogy of Economic Rhetoric in U.S. Communication Studies,” in Communication and the Economy: History, Value, and Agency, ed. Joshua S. Hanan and Mark Hayward (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 82.

35. Greene, “Rhetoric and Capitalism.”

36. Marc Djaballah, “Foucault on Kant, Enlightenment, and Being Critical,” in A Companion to Foucault, ed. Christopher Falzon, Timothy O'Leary, and Jana Sawicki (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 269; Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College De France, 1977–1978 (New York: Picador, 2007), 185, 201.

37. Christopher Falzon, Timothy O'Leary, and Jana Sawicki, ed., A Companion to Foucault (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 375.

38. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 168; Falzon, O'Leary, and Sawicki, A Companion to Foucault, 269.

39. Ben Golder, “Foucault and the Genealogy of Pastoral Power,” Radical Philosophy Review 10, no. 2 (2007): 173.

40. Falzon, O'Leary, and Sawicki, A Companion to Foucault, 312.

41. Greene, “Y Movies,” 31.

42. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 235–6; Greene, “Y Movies,” 31.

43. Falzon, O'Leary, and Sawicki, A Companion to Foucault, 269; Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 235–6.

44. Greene, “Y Movies,” 20.

45. Ibid., 30.

46. Ibid., 30.

47. Falzon, O'Leary, and Sawicki, A Companion to Foucault, 327.

48. Gil Stricklin, Chaplain, 120.

49. “Annual Report”; “FAQs.”

50. “Marketplace Chaplains Golf Classic,” Marketplace (Spring 2015), http://marketplaceministries.com/wp-content/files/magazine/Marketplace-SPRING-15-web.pdf (accessed February 7, 2017); Gil Stricklin, “Chaplains in the Hardwood Industry Caring for Employees and their Families” Marketplace (Summer 2016), http://www.marketplaceministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Marketplace-SUMMER-16.web_.pdf (accessed August 1, 2016).

51. Gil Stricklin, Chaplain, 9.

52. Doug Fagerstrom, “Grace and Peace—From the Heart of our President,” Marketplace (Summer 2016), http://www.marketplaceministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Marketplace-SUMMER-16.web_.pdf (accessed August 1, 2016).

53. George Cotter, “Labor of Love” Marketplace (Summer 2016), http://www.marketplaceministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Marketplace-SUMMER-16.web_.pdf (accessed August 1, 2016).

54. Cotter, “Labor of Love,” 5.

55. Gil Stricklin, “Chaplains’ Compassionate Care Goes On and On, Never Ending” Marketplace (Summer 2016), http://www.marketplaceministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Marketplace-SUMMER-16.web_.pdf (accessed August 1, 2016).

56. “24 Hours in the Life of a Chaplain,” Marketplace (Summer 2016), http://www.marketplaceministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Marketplace-SUMMER-16.web_.pdf (accessed August 1, 2016).

57. “The Rise of the Corporate Chaplain, ‘Bloomberg Businessweek’,” Marketplace Ministries INC., http://marketplaceministries.com/media/ (accessed November 2, 2015).

58. “Employee Letters,” MarketplaceChaplainsUSA, http://mchapusa.com/services/personal-care/employee-letters/ (accessed August 1, 2016).

59. Ibid.

60. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 181–3.

61. Ibid., 183.

62. Michel Foucault, “Afterward: The Subject and Power,” in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chicago: University of 
Chicago Press, 1983), 214–5; also see Greene, “Y Movies,” 29; and Djaballah, “Foucault on Kant,” 269.

63. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 168.

64. Ibid., 168; see also Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 2000), 334–5.

65. Gil Stricklin, “Chaplains in the Hardwood Industry.”

66. Art Stricklin, “Chaplains ‘Mine’ Black Hills of South Dakota,” Marketplace (Spring 2015), http://www.marketplaceministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Marketplace-SPRING-16.web_.pdf (accessed May 1, 2016).

67. “Spring Break 2015 May Mean Little Help for Stressed Employees in America’s Workforce,” MarketplaceChaplainsUSA, http://mchapusa.com/spring-break-2015-may-mean-little-help-for-stressed-employees-in-americas-workforce/ (accessed June 13, 2015).

68. “The Rise of the Corporate Chaplain, ‘Bloomberg Businessweek’,” Marketplace Ministries INC., http://marketplaceministries.com/media/ (accessed November 2, 2015).

69. “What We Do,” Marketplace Ministries INC., http://marketplaceministries.com/chaplainsusa-whatwedo/ (accessed November 2, 2015).

70. “Employee Letters,” MarketplaceChaplainsUSA, http://mchapusa.com/services/personal-care/employee-letters/ (accessed August 1, 2016).

71. Ibid.

72. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 242.

73. Gil Stricklin, Chaplain, 99.

74. “Media—Management, “U.S. News & World Report’.”

75. “The Rise of the Corporate Chaplain, ‘Bloomberg Businessweek’.” See also Mark Oppenheimer, “The Rise of the Corporate Chaplain,” Bloomberg Business, August 23, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-08-23/the-rise-of-the-corporate-chaplain#p3.

76. Art Stricklin, “Chaplains ‘Mine’ Black Hills.”

77. Greene, “Y Movies,” 23.

78. “FAQs.”

79. “Corporate Wellness Strategic Initiative,” MarketplaceChaplainsUSA, http://mchapusa.com/ (accessed November 2, 2015).

80. Barry Brummett describes many of these working-class features. See his book, The Rhetoric of Style (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008).

81. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 183.

82. Grossberg, “Affect’s Future,” 328.

83. Grossberg, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense, 6.

84. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 204.

85. Ibid., 204–14.

86. Ibid., 209.

87. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1990), 21; also see Jeremy R. Carrette, ed. Religion and Culture: Michel Foucault (New York: Routledge, 1999), 179; and Carrette, “Foucault, Religion, and Pastoral Power,” 378.

88. Dana L. Cloud, We Are the Union: Democratic Unionism and Dissent at Boeing (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), xii.

89. Matthew S. May, “Hobo Orator Union: Class Composition and the Spokane Free Speech Fight of the Industrial Workers of the World,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97 (2011): 171.

90. Cloud, We are the Union, xi.

91. Gil Stricklin, Chaplain, 217.