ABSTRACT
Spirituality andconsumption? Really? This book brings together two top- ics that in the eyes of many go uneasily together. Spirituality is sublime. It smells of incense and everything that is good in humans. Consumption is instead mundane, materialistic, and ultimately soulless. The idea of spiri- tual consumption may thus be considered an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. For sure, it triggered negative reactions from some of our informants (not to mention colleagues). Why would business school professors be inter- ested in studying spirituality? Shouldn’t this topic be left to more respected disciplines? Do we really need to frame humanity’s spiritual search as con- sumption? Is there something to gain from calling spiritual seekers con- sumers? These were some of the questions we were asked. We believe that these reactions arise from a cultural tension that is at the centre of both age-old speculation in philosophy, theology, and social science, and the life of countless individuals in postmodern societies: the difficult relationship between matter and spirit, sacred and profane. And yes, we also believe that, as marketing and consumer researchers, we may add something to the debate that would be missed by sociological, cultural, or anthropological analyses of spirituality. Before defending this assertion, which might be easily dismissed as disciplinary colonialism, let us introduce briefly what we mean by spirituality and the way the concept is treated in the disciplines that have it as a subject of study.
