Religion and Economic Life

Abstract

Investigation of the relation between religion and economic life has long been a central concern of sociological reflection, but this topic has been largely defined through debates on the relationship of religion and capitalism, the latter being the specific and dominant expression of economic life in modernity. The work of Karl Marx on the origins and world historical significance of capitalism, and of Max Weber on the Protestant ethic and the ‘spirit of capitalism’ and the economic ethics of the world religions, inevitably overshadow the discussion of both the history and the contemporary forms of the ambiguous and changing relation between religion and economic life. These classical discussions do not, however, exhaust the topic, which can be represented in the following broad terms. Precapitalist configurations of religion and economic life are often subordinated to the sociological, or socioeconomic, study of Western history, and the anthropological study of primarily non-Western cultures affords vital insights. The emergence of modern capitalism is intimately related to political economy, Marx and Marxism, and to Weber's account of the elective affinities between religion and economic life. Christian religious responses to nineteenth and twentieth century capitalism have been dominated by Roman Catholic social teaching. Contemporary capitalism, now unfettered by ideological confrontation with socialism, is best understood as the driving force informing globalization, commodification, and managerialism, and as possessing such comprehensive power as to provoke and sustain a wide range of contrasting religious responses. Possible futures and research options are focused around the capacity of economic life to destroy and recreate ‘nature,’ to re-forge the parameters of human self-understanding, and to virtualize the condition of humankind. Economic life would seem increasingly to have become ‘life’ itself.