Seminar: Bachelor: Lokales Handeln in globalen Zusammenhängen (LHGZ):Capitalism and Christianity: shifting conjunctures of global and local forces - Details
Seminar: Bachelor: Lokales Handeln in globalen Zusammenhängen (LHGZ):Capitalism and Christianity: shifting conjunctures of global and local forces - Details
Economic order and religion present multiple intersections, crucial to the understanding of society. This seminar will give an overview of anthropological approaches to capitalism and Christianity.
The seminar will be organized in two parts. During the first sessions, we will re-read pages of the classics, such as Marx’s view of religion as a mystification of capitalist realities of exploitation, and Weber’s understanding of the Protestant ethic as a premise to capitalistic accumulation. These early social theorists will be further discussed and criticized through more recent authors (i.e. Schneider, Taussig, Parry, Coleman). The course will briefly pay attention to the rise of a ‘consumer paradigm’ as an explanation of religious conversion.
The second half of sessions will be devoted to a closer analysis of Christianity in newly capitalist societies, with a special focus on the former USSR. Nor what the communist authorities claimed to be modernizing state atheism, neither the advent of neoliberal capitalism did erase religion. From a ‘domesticated religion’ under socialism (Dragadze, Hann), Christianity has become a form of ‘conversion to [capitalist] modernities’ (van der Veer). Pentecostal and charismatic movements are now global forms of Christianity (Robbins). By taking root in former officially atheist societies, they become enmeshed in a unique way with local capitalism. For instance, some new communities provide a shelter against crumbling socioeconomic conditions (e.g. Pelkmans, Wanner), even when participation does not entail conversion (Caldwell). We will see also how more traditional Christian movements address issues brought by neoliberal capitalism, such as poverty or entrepreneurial success.
Taken together, the two parts of the seminar will allow us to reflect upon the entanglement of local economic and religious transformations, expressed in practices, beliefs and systems of moral reference, with world-wide processes.
