ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 discusses how the rise of economics into structural dominance over the rest of the social affects religion (and vice versa). The chapter presents an in-depth theoretical discussion that defines a workable theory of ‘marketisation’ that subsumes the ways in which the Global-Market regime shapes religion. The chapter starts by defining marketisation as a complex of processes of neoliberalisation and consumerisation which affects religion from above, and from below. The discussion critiques the differentiation thesis and pleads for an integrative and holistic approach, which allows to show how the supposedly indeterminate and transitional character of the recent transformations of religion worldwide hides a coherent picture. The chapter examines what happens to the nation and the state in the Global-Market regime, and describes the main characteristics of religion as it becomes lifestyled and made to cater individual and collective needs regarding identity, ethics, and belonging. The discussion goes on to argue that the recent change in types of authority, from legal-institutional to charismatic types, in religion and politics namely, is coextensive to the rise of the Market as a regulating ideal and the globalisation of a financialised brand of capitalism. Against the common diagnosis of a fragmented religious landscape, it is argued that the marketisation of religion leads to a process of standardisation within forms that are structured by the grammar of the Global-Market.
