ABSTRACT
As consumer culture theory studies ranging from the Consumer Odyssey (Belk et al., 1989) to the Burning Man (Kozinets, 2002) inform us, much of consumer culture can be interpreted and analysed from the frame of the sacred. More broadly, general subject concerns with how consumption acts as a site for registering discourses of truth, ethics, meaning, and subjec- tivity resonate with what metaphysical philosophy calls the “transcendent domain” (Hedley, 2011). Recurrent spiritual and religious terms in con- sumer culture theory like sacred, divine, devotion, and transcendent are all contingent on a spiritual belief system but what sort of spiritual belief system obtains? Now, when religious discourses are typically approached from lenses of postmodernity, anatheism, new atheism, and fundamental- ism, it is increasingly difficult to speak of sacred contingencies. However, given the recurrence of the sacred within consumer behaviour, it is crucial to consider the contingencies so that the sacred is more than a tautological labelling device. I reflect on the conditions of the sacred within the litera- ture and seek to champion the recent work of Colin Campbell as offering an important framework. As will be demonstrated, Campbell’s Easternization of the West thesis offers a significant framework that not just re-orientates and re-orientalizes discourses of the sacred within a contingent system of worldview but also presents a powerful mode for analysing consumption in general.
