Introduction : states, consumption and managing religions

Bryan S. Turner, Adam Possamai, Jack Barbalet

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

    6 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    In this introduction, we claim that in modern liberal democracies the active citizen is becoming increasingly a passive consumer in which the traditional bases of effective civic participation through work, public service and reproduction are no longer the fundamental conditions of citizenship entitlement (Turner, 2008). This erosion of citizenship was dramatically illustrated by the credit crunch of 2008–10, in which citizens in Britain, Australia and the United States were admonished by their respective governments to shop in order to save both the economy and the society. The new duty of the responsible citizen is to consume in order to promote economic activity and paradoxically at the same time to save, because personal savings in Western societies are at an all time low. In post-industrial capitalism, there is a permanent tension between asceticism as the legacy of the Protestant ethic and acquisitiveness as the legacy of the consumer boom of the postwar economic strategy of the West. States have also adopted the same sales techniques that were originally developed by the advertising industries to promote consumerism. Political parties increasingly treat citizens as an audience that must be cultivated by sales techniques (focus groups, opinion polls, marketing strategies and national identity as branding) and the quality of political leadership is tested by ratings in the opinion polls. Policies are increasingly developed on the basis of focus-group data rather than longterm national needs. Of course, this development of political salesmanship is not especially compatible with the vision of communicative rationality in Habermas’s theory or with Rawls’ view of a liberal well-ordered society. [...] In summary, the general framework of this book is organized around the issue of how the state relates to religion(s) through various orientations that include active management strategies or liberal indifference or direct control. Secondly, we are concerned to understand how religion develops at the social level through the processes of pietization and revival, and how those changes are influenced by consumerism and other secular forces. In other words, we are exploring two paradoxes. As religion (re)enters the public domain by so-called deprivatization, the state moves in to manage religions in the interests of securitization. Secondly, as religious lifestyles become more pious, they can also become more dominated by consumerism.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationReligion and the State: A Comparative Sociology
    EditorsJack Barbalet, Adam Possamai, Bryan S. Turner
    Place of PublicationU.K.
    PublisherAnthem Press
    Pages1-22
    Number of pages22
    ISBN (Electronic)9780857288073
    ISBN (Print)9780857287984
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2011

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