Governing religious identities: law and legibility in neoliberalism

ABSTRACT

This article explores from a Foucauldian perspective how, in the neoliberal age, religious diversity has become a new form of governmentality that is based on practices of classifying and categorizing people according to religious criteria. Contributing to studies on religion and marketization, the article explores how religious diversity is promoted as a category of social order and coexistence and develops two ideas: first, religious diversity is a legal-political form of governmentality geared towards rendering complex populations legible for administrative purposes. Second, religious diversity reflects an economic form of governmentality, in that its legal doctrinal cognates (subjective definitions of religion, sincerity of belief, etc.) call forth liberal notions of consumer choice. While both are premised on the idea that people have identities, there are potential tensions between both forms, as the first tends to favor collectives and the second favors individuals. The article is based on research in Spain and Canada.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious diversity
• governmentality
• Foucault
• law
• religious identity
• neoliberalism
• marketization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Marian Burchardt is a professor of sociology at Leipzig University. As a cultural sociologist, he is interested in how power and institutions shape social life in culturally diverse societies. He is the author of Faith in the Time of AIDS: Religion, Biopolitics and Modernity in South Africa (Palgrave Macmillan 2015). His work has appeared in Law & Social Inquiry, Ethnic and Racial Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Current Sociology, the Journal for the Scientific Studies of Religion and Sociology of Religion.

Notes

1 Significantly, the recognition of religious diversity also produces costs. In the US, such costs emerge for instance from ‘floater holidays’, in Europe’s more expansive welfare state mainly because of the necessary institutional adaptations.

2 One important objection to this notion is that the legal definition of religion limits it to ‘conscience’ thereby demoting it (see for instance Ogilvie 1996).

3 See http://globalnews.ca/news/835892/ontario-hospital-uses-draft-quebec-charter-to-recruit-nurses-and-doctors/. Accessed 30 June 2016.

4 http://governacio.gencat.cat/web/.content/afers_religiosos/consell_diversitat/doccadr1_es.pdf; p. 5, accessed 2 July 2016, translation mine.

5 In the Italian city of Turin as well the Olympic Games provided the occasion for the establishment of more enduring and marketable interfaith relationships.