Theorizing Religion in a Globalizing World

International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 18, No. 1, Fall 2004 ( C© 2004)

Theorizing Religion in a Globalizing World

Christian Karner1 and Alan Aldridge

Drawing on the globalization theories proposed by Zygmunt Bauman, UlrichBeck, and Manuel Castells, this article examines the contemporary signifi-cance of religious ideas, practises, and discourses. We show that novel pat-terns of social stratification, identity construction, economic polarization,and the impact of the alleged postmodern ‘crisis’ on the modern paradigmof science provide the context to the manifold contemporary resurgence ofreligion. Establishing an analytical dialectic between relevant social theoryand the empirical record on millenarianism, religious radicalism, and the re-lationship between middle-class consumerism and religiosity, we argue thatthe social and psychological consequences of globalization have heightenedthe appeal and relevance of religions: As discourses of political resistance, asanxiety-coping mechanisms, and as networks of solidarity and community.

KEY WORDS: globalization; network society; desecularization; millenarianism; consumerism.

In Intimations of Postmodernity, Zygmunt Bauman favorably contrastsa new sociology of postmodernity—the systematic and critical study of an ar-guably novel historical era and social condition—to postmodern sociology.1

The latter shares certain conceptual characteristics (notably a relativisticepistemology) with the heterogeneous cultural and intellectual movementdesignated as postmodernism. Bauman’s prolific career since 1992 has beenlargely dedicated to the former project of a new historical (or historized) so-ciology focused on the current epoch and its manifold implications. Increas-ingly uncomfortable about being confused for a postmodernist,2 however,Bauman has subsequently re-named his object of analysis and critique asLiquid Modernity.3 As such, he has become part of a group of distinguishedcommentators for whom globalization is the defining characteristic of thecontemporary world.

1School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK;e-mail: [email protected].

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0891-4486/04/1000-0005/0 C© 2004 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.

6 Karner and Aldridge

In this article, we examine seminal analyses of globalization and con-temporary society including those proposed by Zygmunt Bauman, UlrichBeck and Manuel Castells. Following a clarification of terminology and thedelineation of a historical focus, we will draw on influential (and in manyrespects complementary) theories to discuss the place and significance ofreligious beliefs, practises and identities in times significantly shaped by theforces of (economic) globalization. We will argue that the new (“postmod-ern” or “liquid[ly] modern”) patterns of social stratification, politics andidentity formation identified by Bauman, Beck and Castells map onto—and hence underline the continuing relevance of—some of the traditionalconcerns in the anthropology and sociology of religion. The first part of thispaper will therefore counterpose the sociology of globalization and religiousanthropology to demonstrate their mutual relevance in the contemporaryworld. In the second part of the paper, we continue our engagement with thesociology of postmodernity by exploring the relationship between religionand consumerism as well as debates about “(de-)secularization” in times ofglobalization. Arguing for a mutualy enriching dialectic between theory andempirical data, we critically engage with theories of globalization by drawingon existing studies of millenarianism, religious radicalism and violence, the“spiritual supermarket” and the contemporary blurring of the secular dividebetween religion and politics. While not in consistent agreement with theirrespective interpretations of religion, we thus selectively draw on the con-tributions made by Bauman, Beck and Castells to argue that, if synthesizedwith other recent and influential social theory, they enable the constructionof a theoretical model that can shed new light on the empirical record onreligion and religiosity in the contemporary world.

PRELIMINARY CLARIFICATIONS

A discussion of the place and significance of religion in times of glob-alization must surely begin by establishing working definitions of the twoimplicated concepts, the meaning of neither of which is self-evident or un-contested. In the case of religion, earlier attempts at establishing universaldefinitions based on necessary and sufficient criteria have gradually givenway to an appreciation of the multi-faceted and context-specific characterof beliefs, practises and identities more or less widely recognized as con-stituting a religion. Among the earlier classical definitions, the “intellectu-alist” paradigm (and its emphasis on the cognitive, explanatory characterof religious belief) and the “social,” Durkheimian approach (with its focuson social integration/reproduction achieved in and through religious ritual)continue to shape much thinking in the study of religions in the Anglo-Saxon world. What has changed, however, is their former status as—interms of explanatory ambition—universally applicable and single-handedly

Theorizing Religion in a Globalizing World 7

sufficient definitions. Recognizing religion to be a complex phenomenon thatpotentially comprises “ritual, doctrinal, mythic, experiential, ethical/legal,organizational/social, material and political/economic dimensions,”4 recentscholarship has addressed the related question as to how many of thesedimensions need to be present for a given phenomenon to “qualify” as re-ligious. The following discussion will adopt a working definition inspired bya Wittgensteinian5 or “prototypical”6 approach, which defines the conceptin terms of “family resemblances” and “degrees of similarity” with an idealtype or prototypical case. Conceptual boundaries are thus blurred, givingrise to “unbounded categories [that] render religion an affair of more or lessrather than (. . . ) a categorical matter of ‘yes’ [i.e. x is a religion] or ‘no’ [i.e.y is not].”7 Whilst limiting ethnocentric bias, such redefinitions emphasizingfamily resemblances and degrees of fit also underline the socioeconomicand political embeddedness of religious practises, ideas, discourses, andidentities. In contrast to what we may term the textbook approach of confin-ing its analysis to a largely self-contained chapter, religion thus emerges asintrinsically intertwined with—and only meaningful in relation to—its widercontexts and historical conditions of possibility.

The concept and, perhaps more importantly, the historical time frameof globalization also call for comments of introductory clarification. UlrichBeck has famously distinguished between globalism, globality, and global-ization. The concept of globalism, according to Beck, entails an economicbias that tends to reproduce the ideological tenets of neoliberalism includingthe notion of an allegedly all-embracing and all-explaining “world marketsystem.” Globality, on the other hand, captures “the totality of social re-lationships (. . . ) not integrated into or determined (. . . ) by national statepolitics.”8 While Beck underlines that cross-border, supra-national social re-lationships have defined human interaction “for a long time,” his third notionof globalization—“the processes through which sovereign national statesare criss-crossed and undermined by transnational actors”—introduces amore narrowly delineated historical focus. In our current times of “secondmodernity,” Beck argues, globality and globalization have become multidi-mensional and irreversible.9 While Beck’s tripartite schema rightly estab-lishes an analytical distinction between economic exchanges, social relation-ships and political processes that transcend the territorial “container” of themodern nation state, we will use the term “globalization” in this article asa shorthand comprising economic, social, political, technological, and cul-tural dimensions. Accepting the postulate that we are currently witnessinga qualitatively novel historical condition—variously identified as “liquid,”10

“second”11 or “late”12 modernity—the remaining introductory question iswhen to date the beginning of this current epoch.

Instead of insisting on a single rupture marking the historical watershedbetween modernity and “liquid”/post-modernity, seminal contributions to


this debate can be read as revealing a gradual, rather than sudden,transformation—spanning across the second half of the 20th century13—of social, economic and political relations into their current, and more orless full-blown, globalized state. Different facets of the resulting social con-dition have been captured by Bell’s notion of post-industrialism,14 Bauman’saccount of Fordist production-based economies becoming postmodern andconsumption-focused,15 the emergence of self-consciously fluid identitiessince the 1960’s as reflected in the ideological challenges and political sub-jectivities constructed by new social movements,16 the development of “thenetwork society”17 and the emergence of “risk” as a defining characteristicof life under conditions of “reflexive modernization.”18 In terms of politi-cal developments and milestones, the growing hegemony of neoliberalismin the 1980’s, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 as well as thesubsequent collapse of Soviet communism stand out as defining moments inrecent history that heralded a fundamental reshuffle, though certainly not theonce enthusiastically proclaimed “end of history,”19 of global power struc-tures and their previous bifurcation into two superpowers and their spheresof influence. Rather than the optimistically anticipated historical victory ofliberal democracy and social stability, the post-Cold War era has witnessedpolitical fragmentation, socioeconomic polarization and an increase in theincidence of violence widely attributed to identities assumed to be primor-dial and mutually exclusive. The emergence of “neotribal movements,”20

the global “politicization of culture”21 and the rise of “ethnonationalist”politics22 over the last two decades raise the question: What role is religioncapable of playing in a world increasingly dominated by the forces of eco-nomic globalization and the contradictions thus generated in the lives ofcountless millions? Robertson and Chirico theorized the interplay of reli-gion and globalization almost two decades ago, arguing that “the virtuallyworldwide eruption of religious and quasi-religious concerns and themescannot be exhaustively comprehended in terms of (. . . ) what has been hap-pening sociologically within societies” and that “globalization enhances, atleast in the relatively short run, religion and religiosity.”23 It is to these andsimilar issues that we now turn.

GLOBALIZATION: HUMAN COSTS AND RESPONSES

In The Individualized Society, Zygmunt Bauman argues—in noticeablecontrast to Robertson and Chirico—that what is (amongst other things)historically unique about the currently dominant social and cultural condi-tion is a conspicuous absence of notions of immortality and transcendence:“[T]ranscendence, that leap into eternity leading to permanent settlement,is neither coveted nor seems necessary for the liveability of life. For the first


time, mortal humans manage to do without immortality and do not seem tomind.”24

Referring to our working definition of religion based on broadly con-ceptualized family resemblances, the assumed existence of some form of“transcendental order”25 continues to be a, perhaps the only, core charac-teristic necessary for a phenomenon to be recognized as “religious.” Theabsence of notions of immortality or transcendence described by Baumanwould thus appear to imply a fully secularized society. Contrary to such areading, and indeed contrary to a whole lineage of secularization theoristsranging from Wilson26 to Bruce,27 we will demonstrate that religious beliefs,rituals, discourses, and identities can be discerned in the interstices of thesociological globalization literature. In the following analysis we argue thatthe social and psychological implications of globalization and postmodernityreveal the continuing or, more accurately, revived cultural relevance of reli-gion: As an existential/cognitive coping mechanism in times of widespread(and socially determined) anxiety, and as a millenarian discourse—as well asa source of group solidarity—in the face of growing economic polarizationand the resulting social marginalization of large sections of humanity. In alater section, we will return to these themes to relate them to the postmodernde-differentiation28 of spheres clearly demarcated in earlier times of moder-nity; such dedifferentiation underlies recent “anti-secular” tendencies29 thatblur the religious and the political. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s argumentthat crises transform the “undiscussed” (doxa) into discourse,30 we argue thatglobalization entails crises one consequence of which has been a “politiciza-tion of religion.” While in part already supported by data and existing studies,the following argument aims to set the stage for future empirical work onreligion and globalization.

New Divisions in the “Individualized Society”

In his monumental trilogy on The Information Age,31 Manuel Castellsdemonstrates that life in the last quarter of the 20th century underwent aseries of profound transformations involving the emergence of a novel eco-nomic and cultural logic based on international networks of interrelatedand adaptive “nodes” of activity, cooperation and communication. Revo-lutionary developments in information and communications technology—which Castells in large part attributes to the convergence of economic en-trepreneurialism, high quality research, and a growing counterculture ofhackers in California (and particularly Silicon Valley) of the 1970’s—areshown to have been key catalysts to the emergence of a new “informa-tional mode of development.”32 The global integration of financial markets,the key role of multinational companies (and their own complex networksof economic cooperation) in the “globalization of markets for goods and


services,” as well as fundamentally altered experiences of space and timeare all defining features of a new and increasingly global social (dis)order.The implications of this novel era in human history are manifold, re-shapingnational and international politics as much as people’s working and domes-tic lives. While Beck speaks of the “disempowerment of politics”33 and aresulting “de-nationalization shock,”34 Castells stresses the continuing im-pact of the structural parameters provided by state institutions as well asthe strategies of (national) politicians on the differential (local) effects ofglobalization.35 Such theoretical nuances notwithstanding, Castells concurswith Beck in observing “the triumph of markets over governments.” Theglobal economy is a network of interconnected economies; if any economydisconnected itself from the network it would simply be bypassed, with dev-astating consequences for itself but not for the network, in which resourcesof capital, information, technology, goods, services, and skilled labor, wouldcontinue to flow freely.36

A position within, and adaptability to, the global market of economicnetworks are thus necessary to avoid exclusion from what Castells terms the“space of flows” and the dead end of stifling poverty such exclusion entails.He documents a range of marginalized areas and territories including sub-Saharan Africa as well as inner-city ghettos in North America and WesternEurope, their lowest common denominator being the fact that internationalflows of information, capital and labor bypass them. However, life insidethe network has similarly been transformed in the information age. Whilstdismissive of simplistic and empirically unverified assumptions that informa-tion technology inevitably causes rising unemployment, Castells emphasizesthat people’s working lives have been profoundly restructured by the forcesof neoliberal ideology, privatization and deregulation, and the rise in thenumber of flex-timers. This has entailed a fundamentally altered relation-ship between capital and labor: in the network society, capital is global andlabor is local and individualized. The class struggle has been “subsumed intothe more fundamental opposition between the bare logic of capital flowsand the cultural values of human experience.”37 Substantial parts of the re-mainder of this article will investigate the place of religion(s) as part of thecultural values of human experience informing practises and discourse ofresistance against the bare logic of capital flows.

Bauman’s and Beck’s respective contributions to the sociological anal-ysis of globalization similarly point to the disarticulation of transnationalor “nomadic”38 capital on one hand, and ordinary people’s localized, uncer-tain and increasingly individualized lives on the other. Bauman repeatedlyemphasizes that in times of liquid modernity the economic dominance ofmultinational capital (capable of relocating to wherever production costsare lowest) increasingly disempowers the nation state as one of the defin-ing institutions of industrial (or “solid”) modernity. Politics continues to


be conducted locally, nationally or at most in supranational bodies suchas the European Union, but real power lies—in the final analysis—withmultinational capital.39 Like Bauman, Beck investigates the profound ef-fects of unrelenting economic globalization on the lives of ordinary peo-ple who continue to live in localities (rather than in airport lounges orcyberspace). Both theorists have reported a condition aptly described as“structural unemployment,” which is unlikely to improve with the next eco-nomic upturn but is seemingly written into the logic of the contemporaryworld. Millions of people, and by now generations within the same families,are condemned to long-term or permanent unemployment—a trend cor-roborated by recent figures indicating that the global number of the (doc-umented) unemployed had risen to some 186 million in 200340—and manymore millions have to make do with part-time work or fixed term contracts.Meanwhile, the employed can never be sure that they will not be “included”in the next round of “downsizing” or “streamlining.”41 Whilst capital keepsmoving, governments lose out on huge amounts of tax revenue and wel-fare states become increasingly difficult to sustain,42 resulting in a situationwhere wealth—firmly in the hand of multinational corporations—has “be-come global,” while “poverty has remained local.”43 The individualizationof work coupled with the gradual dismantling of yesteryear’s safety netsgive rise to a situation defined by Beck as condemning individuals to searchfor “biographical solutions of systemic contradictions.”44 The scene seemsset for a new form of social polarization separating a global business elite,comprising “frequent-flier executives, financiers, bureaucrats, professionalsand media moguls”45 who control the nodes of the network society, fromthe many localities where job insecurity and existential uncertainty turn intochronic anxiety. Thus we return to a founding theme in the sociology ofreligion.46 However, the explanatory direction of the Weberian paradigm isnow inverted: In place of the economic consequences of doctrinally induced“salvation anxiety” during early capitalism, we are now confronted with eco-nomically induced “survival anxiety,” for which religions appear capable ofoffering some form of antidote.

Religious Reactions

These last statements must of course be seen as hypotheses, as openquestions to be addressed by further research. That being said, however,the empirical record strongly suggests that the connection between socioe-conomic polarization/marginalization and anxiety on the one hand, and awidely documented47 contemporary religious revivalism on the other, is notmerely conjectural. What we appear to be witnessing is a “de-privatization”of religion, a global “desecularization of the world,”48 an increase in anti-secular49 movements and discourses disenchanted with the project of


modernity and insistent on the political potential and public role of reli-gious beliefs and practises. Remarkably, this public revival of religion spanscontinents as much as traditions, reflected as it is in a Catholic resurgence“from Manila to Krakow, from Santiago de Chile to Seoul,”50 in a Protestant“upsurge” across Latin America51 and sub-Saharan Africa,53 a Buddhist re-vival in East Asia,53 the growth of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel and America,54

the rise of Hindu nationalism55 as well as of a wide range of Islamicist56 or-ganizations in many parts of the Muslim world.57 Though these phenomenaand movements differ hugely in their political methods and aspirations,58

their respective emergence and increasing appeal have largely coincidedwith the rise of the network society59 since the 1970’s. While we will returnto what appears to be more than a mere historical coincidence in due course,the suggestion that religious discourses and identities can counteract socialmarginalization and survival anxiety requires further discussion.

Re-appropriating Benedict Anderson’s terminology, Bauman has sug-gested that our contemporary age of postmodernity is “also the age (. . . )of the lust [and] search for community, invention of community, imaginingcommunity,”60 spurred by a perceived lack of shared meaning and groupsolidarity. Not altogether dissimilarly, Castells writes of “communal heav-ens” or “resistance identities”61 as reactions against the information age,symptomatic of a new conflict between “the Net and the self,” between“networks of instrumentality, powered by new information technologies”on one hand, and “the power of identity, anchoring people’s minds in theirhistory, geography, and cultures”62 on the other. Social anomie63 is, of course,no more peculiar and to the contemporary era than economic inequality orindeed their co-occurrence. This is illustrated by Kenneth Burridge’s in-fluential study of millenarian activities, which surveys the historical andanthropological records on religious reactions to the weakening or dis-ruption of the social order and a widespread resulting “awareness of be-ing disenfranchised.”64 Burridge demonstrates that, commonly in situationscompounding political marginalization with the failure or disintegration ofexisting social relationships, initial “attempt[s] to explain and comprehendthe fact of disenfranchizement” precede activities geared towards the con-struction of a “new culture,” a “new social order,” a “new religion,” “or-thodoxy” and “moral community.” Importantly, millenarianism transcendspolitico-economic issues,65 re-appropriating established religious traditionsin an attempt to comprehend and rectify a social (dis)order experienced asdeeply unsatisfactory, unjust and de-humanizing and reflected in the expec-tation that ultimately “some supernatural power [will] overcome the crisis.”66

The objective of millenarian movements is the re-establishment of human in-tegrity, a political re-ordering that affects personhood as much as social rela-tionships, “envisag[ing] a new condition of being.”67 In the analytical terms of


the social sciences, millenarianism therefore combines what has been termedthe cognitive function of religion68—in such cases geared towards the expla-nation of (perceived) injustice and disorder—with the political intentions ofa discourse of critique and social reconstruction. The question arises whetherthe contemporary “desecularization of the world”69 constitutes, at least inpart, a millenarian reaction against the effects and “human consequences”70

of globalization. Some corroborating evidence of such a correlation wasalready provided in the very early stages of the (then) emerging networksociety. Robert Bellah thus interpreted the new religious consciousness inCalifornia of the 1960’s and 70’s as a reaction against a crisis in modernity,experienced as a crisis of meaning or the “inability of utilitarian individu-alism to provide a meaningful pattern of personal and social existence.”71

A decade on (and in an altogether different cultural context), GananathObeyeskere reported on the cult of Huniyan that had sprung up in post-1965Sri Lanka among urban proletarians in times of rapid social change. Accord-ing to Obeyeskere, (Huniyan) “sorcery [had become] the symbolic idiomwhich expresses the conflicts endemic in urban society,” including poverty,unemployment, over-crowded living conditions in ghetto-like areas, familyconflict and the absence of larger kin units.72 Echoing the long-standing so-cial anthropological interpretation of religious belief as, in part, a way ofexplaining (mis-)fortune73 and of ritual as, in part, a coping mechanism foranxiety,74 Obeyeskere portrayed the social dislocations brought about byurbanization and the frustrations and anxieties experienced in times of de-clining employment opportunities—in short, urban anomie—as the contextto the rise of a new (though culturally grounded) religious identity and setof practises.

It is worth noting that Burridge observes that “the most favorable politi-cal conditions for the emergence of a millenarian movement seem to be whentolerance is a euphemism for the kind of [political system] which is eithernot powerful enough to suppress [millenarian] activities, or which for a vari-ety of reasons is inhibited from deploying the power at its disposal.”75 Such(arguably involuntary) “tolerance” aptly describes the contemporary world,if tolerance is not taken to mean the final victory of liberal democracy (inFukuyama’s sense), but as capturing the ability of the Internet, the informa-tion superhighway, to make information readily available and to disseminateit widely, quickly and relatively cheaply in the network society. Whilst in-formation and communication technology appear to provide technologicalconditions of possibility for “hard-to-suppress” millenarian activities76, theearlier-mentioned sharpened economic inequalities,77 the exclusion of count-less millions in large parts of entire continents as well as in impoverishedinner city ghettos much closer to the powerful nodes of the information age,constitutes a social climate of widespread and chronic disenfranchizement


typically conducive to millenarian “awakenings.” A well-documented ex-ample of internet-mediated resistance against disenfranchizement induced,or at least exacerbated, by globalization was provided by what Castells hastermed the “first informational guerrilla movement”78—the Zapatista strug-gle against the effects of liberalization policies on “Indian” peasant commu-nities of rural Mexico between 1994 and 1996. Initially struggling for landrights, these peasant communities were further threatened by Mexican lib-eralization policies in the 1990’s, which ended restrictions on imports of cornand protection of the price of coffee.79 The Zapatista movement involvedpeasant unions, Maoist groups as well as Catholic priests, who—given theirappeal to strong religious feeling among Indian peasants—fulfilled a vitalsupport- and legitimation role within the movement. Crucial to the eventualsuccess of the Zapatista struggle, reflected in important concessions enactedthrough a constitutional reform in 1996, was the use of telecommunications,videos and computer-mediated communication to mobilize a worldwide net-work of solidarity groups.80 Internet-based worldwide alliances coupled withconceptions of a “moral economy”81 supported by the Catholic Church weretherefore core components in the Zapatistas’ opposition to the new global or-der. Their struggle against the exclusionary consequences of economic mod-ernization represented a serious challenge to the assumed inevitability of anew geopolitical order in which capitalism becomes universally accepted.82

Six years after the Shi’ite Islamic revolution in Iran, Robertson andChirico first observed a more general, increasingly global trend towards thepoliticization of religion as a reaction against the “strains and discontents”brought about by the process of globalization.83 This trend has clearly in-tensified since, as reflected in the marked increase and visibility of religiousmovements geared towards political reform and/or social support in con-texts as varied as north Africa, central Asia, the Middle East and LatinAmerica.84 Picking a random sample from a rapidly growing “database,” itseems hard to overlook a recurring connection between social marginaliza-tion and economic insecurity on one hand, and religious revivalism on theother. The upsurge in conservative Protestant Christianity, particularly pro-nounced in Latin America and in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa overthe last three decades, involves the creation of a “sub-society [for] thosewho count for little or nothing in the wider world.”85 The appeal of religioussupport networks86 to those excluded from the global “space of flows”87 alsoemerges from the recent observation that Islamicist movements as well asPentecostal Christianity spread among the unemployed victims of urban-ization, poverty-stricken slum dwellers struggling to survive in the infor-mal economy who are both disillusioned with the (emancipatory) ideologiesof yesteryear and unprotected by non-existing welfare systems.88 Jean andJohn Comaroff postulate an even clearer correlation in arguing that the


unprecedented manifestation of zombies in the South African countrysideis a response to a “world gone awry” and has grown in direct proportionto the translocalization of management and destablization of labor, whichhave led to a shrinking labor market for young men and to correspond-ing feelings of erasure and loss of kinship and community.89 Job insecurityand managerial decisions taken elsewhere correspond very closely to Bau-man’s assessment of the contemporary economy as entailing “global wealthand local poverty”90 as a manifestation of the disarticulation of “nomadiccapital” from local (as well as largely disposable) labor.91 Further conse-quences include, as we have seen, the gradual dismantling of welfare states inthe “developed”—perhaps more aptly described as “Western” or “northern”—world. The human consequences of globalization, including the atomiza-tion of social life abandoning isolated individuals92 to the aforementionedsearch for “biographical solutions of systemic contradictions,”93 also affectmiddle-class consumers and hence the relative, or at least temporary, “win-ners” in the global economy. The appeal of (quasi-)religious promises ofstability or assurance, as a psychological antidote against social/economic un-certainty, is also revealed in a documented increase in middle-class interest infortune- and tarot readings, ranging from Thailand to the US and centeringon questions of job (in)security.94

While we will say more about (contemporary/ postmodern) middle-class religiosity in due course, the place of religious practises and identitiesamong those compensating for the lack of state-funded welfare in the richnodes of the network society is also worth noting. Bridget Anderson’s studyof migrant domestic workers in several European cities provides a pow-erful critique of the exploitation of women from developing countries atthe hands of middle-class Europeans. Anderson not only demonstrates thatthese women workers fulfill a crucial structural requirement (i.e. the serviceof care) in a post-welfare age, but she also points out the often contradictoryeffects of religious identities in these women’s lives: As a crucial networkof support and meaning helping them to cope with the experience of ex-ploitation thousands of miles from their own families, and simultaneously asa signifier of difference and exclusion from their (very often not particularlyhospitable) “host”-societies and families.95

Radical/Violent Resistance

For a discussion of religion in the contemporary world to be at all ade-quate let alone complete, mention must be made of the much discussed andwidely as well as justifiably feared specter of terrorist violence seeminglygrounded in religious Weltanschauungen. With 9/11 and, more recently, theattacks in Madrid on 3/11/04 as watersheds in contemporary history and


arguably but the tip of an iceberg the depth of which we have yet to grasp,there is a strong case for the analytical integration of these atrocities in abroader historical framework postulating religious violence as a simulta-neously extremist and revealing reaction against the contemporary globalcondition. Within such a historicized framework we can distinguish betweenpopular as well as academic interpretations96 that attribute causal power anda violent propensity to religion per se on one hand, and more thoroughlycontextualized interpretations—preferred by the present authors—of cer-tain religious discourses as vehicles for the articulation of socioeconomicdespair and profound political disillusionment on the other. An advocateof such historically and sociologically contextualized accounts of the radicalreligious movements often somewhat problematically designated as “funda-mentalist,” Gilles Kepel links their emergence with widespread perceptionsof a crisis of legitimacy besetting the global economic order, and with thesocial and technological changes that have reshaped all our lives since the1970’s. If workers’ movements were characteristic of the industrial era, re-ligious movements have “a singular capacity to reveal the ills of society, forwhich they have their own diagnosis. This diagnosis itself yields a clue, whichmust be investigated.”97

One such empirical investigation has been carried out by MarkJuergensmeyer in a series of case studies centered on some of the fearedindividuals and radical movements that go far beyond millenarian discon-tent and anticipation in perpetrating acts of violence they seek to justifyin religious terms. Based on his interviews with participants in movementsas varied as Hamas, militant Sikhism and Aum Shinrikyo98 as well as withleading actors within the North American Christian Right, Northern Irishsectarian movements and radical Jewish groups, Juergensmeyer99 argues thattheir lowest common denominator is an ideological adherence to a (sub-)“culture of violence.” Such groups, as Juergensmeyer demonstrates, regardthemselves and the world at large as being embroiled in a “cosmic war” be-tween the forces of good and evil. Violence is consequently constructed (andcondoned) as a defensive strategy against encroaching (supernatural or, veryoften, “satanic”) powers. While their Manichean worldviews are shown toappropriate parts of pre-existing religious traditions in highly selective ways,Juergensmeyer also investigates their social bases and concludes that “theimagined soldiers of cosmic wars tend to be young and male (. . . ) membersof financially and socially marginal groups for which there is a great needfor empowerment.”100 As Juergensmeyer himself concedes, however, suchmarginalization can be relative or a merely anticipated and feared futurepossibility.

In this regard, our discussion of religious radicalism and globalizationcan be tellingly extended to include Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) as a


predominantly urban middle-class/upper caste ideology widely identifiedwith the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), until very recently at the head ofIndia’s (coalition) government, but also closely associated with the destruc-tion of Babar’s mosque in Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh) in December 1992 andthe wave of communal violence that swept across India in its aftermath.Although the philosophical roots of Hindu nationalism can be traced to the19th century101 and the main organizational vehicles of Hindutva originatedin the first half of the twentieth century,102 it was not until the 1980’s thatlong-established Congress hegemony gave way to the “saffron wave”103 ofwhat Bhatt terms the “majoritarian, chauvinistic, anti-minority ideology ofHindu supremacism.”104 The BJP’s rapid rise to power over the last twodecades was in at least two respects significantly aided by the forces andconsequences of globalization. Firstly, economic insecurity and reforms ofeconomic liberalization during the 1980’s left many middle-class Hindus in-creasingly fearful of their once privileged status,105 and hence susceptible tothe discursive invocation/construction of a Hindu nation to be asserted anddefended against external enemies106 commonly condensed into the symbolof “the Muslim.” Secondly, the “global Hindu community” came to provideimportant financial and symbolic backing for the projects of Hindu nation-alism, most notably reflected in the transnational transfer of money andconsecrated stones—dedicated to the planned “re-construction” of Ram’stemple in Ayodhya107—from the diaspora to “the homeland.”108 As a primeexample of globality or the social relationships transcending the “nation-state container,”109 this ideological participation of diaspora Hindus in In-dian politics has also been interpreted as reflecting a widespread “politi-cization of culture”110 brought about by experiences of migration, socialmarginalization and vulnerability.111 However, Hindu nationalism also con-fronts a profound ideological dilemma—how to reconcile the financial andsymbolic advantages the BJP has sought to derive from foreign investmentand diaspora connections with an earlier (and in important Hindutva quar-ters continuing) espousal of economic nationalism.112 Several discourses oneconomic globalization, local contexts and globality co-exist, albeit in con-siderable tension: BJP supporters advocating privatization and deregulationpolicies are challenged by Hindutva hardliners opposed to neoliberalism andWestern-style consumerism;113 part of a near-global Hindutva network, lo-cal organizers among Hindu communities in the UK discursively “adjust”to diaspora contexts, while some previous BJP voters among Delhi’s lowermiddle-class feel threatened by foreign investment and hence strongly dis-approve of the government’s adjustment to global economic trends.114

Thus we return to the themes of marginalization, actual exclusion and/or the fear of future disenfranchizement recurring throughout the global-ization literature.115 The empirical studies reviewed in this section broadly


corroborate Manuel Castells’ interpretation of, for example, Christian andIslamic “fundamentalisms” as “resistance identities” growing out of theexperience of exclusion from the dominant nodes in the network societyin general, and as an “attempt to reassert control over life (. . . ) in directresponse to the uncontrollable processes of globalization”116 in particular.However, given that the mere “fear of marginalization”117 can grant suffi-cient appeal to the exclusivist demands and discourses of religious radicals,118

future empirical and theoretical work—to which we can only here alludein anticipation—will have to attempt to illuminate the circumstances underwhich millenarian protest becomes actively hostile and violent. All along, weare confronted with the persisting challenge of human agency: The fear or ex-perience of marginalization and disillusionment do not single-handedly turnindividuals into religious nationalists, radicals or terrorists; on an individuallevel (and repeating a sociological maxim), socioeconomic circumstancesare imperfect predictors of ideological conviction and, even less, of socialpractise. Clearly, the broadly discernible patterns discussed in this sectiontherefore represent generalized observations and correlations but certainlynot social “laws.” In other words, human agency and discursive contesta-tion must be included as mediating variables in assessments of radicalizedreligion as a by-product of globalization.

POSTMODERN CONSUMERISM AND RELIGION

In Intimations of Postmodernity,119 Bauman elaborates on a theme re-curring in much of his more recent writing—the changing forms of social con-trol and reproduction as “solid” modernity becomes “liquid,” as industrial-ism turns into postindustrialism and capital becomes “nomadic.” Our currenthistorical epoch, Bauman argues, operates with a novel mechanism of disci-pline and control that relies less and less on the “panoptical schema” of indus-trial modernity analyzed by Michel Foucault.120 Instead, social integrationis achieved through “consumerist seduction” reflected in people’s ongoingreconstruction of their fluid identities through ever changing commoditiesand lifestyles. With the exception of politically marginal groups and individ-uals who either refuse or fail to consume (and hence continue to be sub-ject to “panoptical surveillance/repression”), consumerism—according toBauman—suffices to guarantee (relative) order and social reproduction.121

Bryan Turner has advanced a similar argument, though one more imme-diately relevant to religion, in suggesting that “the public realm in latecapitalism can function without an overarching system of common legiti-mation grounded in religion, despite the chaos of personal life-styles (. . . )enhanced by the consumer market.”122 In describing the relative beneficia-ries of the global economy rather than the disenfranchized discussed above,


such accounts thus portray consumerism as the new “opium” and consumersas politically apathetic, hedonistic, manipulated, and thoroughly individual-ized. In this section, we critically engage with these and similar argumentsby examining the relationship between consumerism and religion as well asits implications for discussions concerning the (de-)secularization of society.

The contemporary period of reflexive modernization entails social prob-lems, inequalities, and risks that, though global in distribution, are enduredand experienced individually “as personal inadequacies, guilt feelings, anxi-eties, conflicts and neuroses. (. . . ) Social crises appear as individual crises.”123

While people’s experiences of environmental risks, economic uncertaintyand political instability are of course profoundly shaped by class, status andgeography, individualization, anomie, and anxiety also affect affluent andrelatively secure middle-class consumers.124 This analysis implies that socialactors, however much part of the network society they may be, cannot bereduced to the singular subject position of “the apolitical consumer” per-manently freed from all existential fears. It also raises the question whetherthe contemporary relevance of religion discussed above, as a political andcultural reaction providing solidarity and meaning as well as psychologicalassurance, can be observed among the privileged as much as among thedisenfranchized. If so, religious identities, beliefs, and practises among theformer can be expected to differ from the millenarian and radical reac-tions discussed in the previous section. Mapping this onto the argumentthat liquid modernity implies consumerism, we may also ask if middle-class religiosity has been reshaped by “consumerist seduction?” Do affluentconsumers’ religious practises and identities necessarily reflect the logic ofglobal capitalism, thus constituting the hegemonic (or hegemonized) oppo-site to the movements and discourses of millenarian resistance discussedearlier?

“The Spiritual Supermarket”

“‘Religion,” Paul Heelas declares,125 “would appear to be the very lastthing that can be consumed.” His view represents the opinion of many soci-ologists, including those specializing in the study of religion and also in thefield of consumption. However they are defined, consumption, consumerism,consumer society and consumer culture are seen as corrosive of religiousbelief, practise and institutions. Admittedly, if we take a Durkheimian per-spective anything can be socially constructed as sacred—a rock or a tree,as Durkheim said, so why not a commodity? The sacred may, Featherstoneargues,126 sustain itself within consumer culture, but at what price? In Jesus inDisneyland, Lyon127 fears the consequence will be the atrophy of prophecyand social critique, as religious communities celebrate the social order rather


than confront its problems and challenge its injustices. It will be, in the mostbanal sense, society worshipping itself.

Consumption stands in contrast to various “Others,” most importantlyproduction, investment, conservation, and citizenship. In these binary op-positions, consumers are painted pejoratively: Parasitic consumers versususeful producers, profligate consumers versus prudent investors, selfish con-sumers versus responsible conservationists, and passive consumers versusactive citizens.128 These contrasts go to the heart of Western societies’ self-understanding; they express visions, anxieties, and ambivalence about thegood life and the good society, reflecting core themes that inform the socio-logical classics. Analogous oppositions are overlaid, forming a potent armoryfor the critique of culture: public/private; social/individual; serious/frivolous;sacred/profane. In each case, the category “religion” is located under the firstterm and “consumption” under the second, “dominated” term. Underlyingthem all, we would argue, is an opposition whose salience to sociologicaltheorizing can scarcely be understated: The opposition between culturalpessimism and optimism.

Secularization theory is, we would argue, one the foremost examplesof full-blown Kulturpessimismus. Almost all of its leading advocates, includ-ing Bryan Wilson and (at least before his recantation) Peter Berger, followMax Weber in voicing profound despair at the unstoppable outworking ofrationalization socially, culturally, and individually. For Wilson in particu-lar, secularization entails demoralization: Moral judgements are replacedby causal explanations, and culpability yields to excusability. As communitydeclines, society is increasingly co-ordinated by technical controls ratherthan by morally charged social bonds. Echoing Daniel Bell’s analysis of thecultural contradictions of capitalism,129 Wilson argues that the Protestantethic “would be dysfunctional were it to continue to command adherence inthe consumer society.”130 Such a society requires hedonism, not asceticism.The “values” of consumer society invite contempt and cynical detachment,but cynicism can achieve little by way of collective resistance, and even fuelsthe demoralization from which it simultaneously recoils. In such a culturalclimate, religion can no longer perform the soteriological task of reconcilinghumanity to evil and suffering.

Given this context, what might “the spiritual supermarket”131 connoteexcept superficiality and hedonism? Shopping in supermarkets and shoppingmalls—Ritzer’s132 “cathedrals of consumption”—stands as paradigmatic ofconsumerism: A realm of self-indulgence underpinned by “the active ide-ology that the meaning of life is to be found in buying things and pre-packaged experiences.”133 Faith is reduced to pick-and-mix134 or religion ala carte,135 a fragile confection lacking, in Wilson’s pungent phrase, “socialsignificance.”


Shopping is iconic of Western decadence; even Western discourse ap-pears to concede that this is so. Nothing could be more mundane, more selfishor more trivial; it has little of the sacred about it. Bauman136 makes greatplay with these themes. For him, spaces of consumption typically encourageaction but not interaction, since consumption is an irredeemably individualactivity. Any encounters that do take place in such spaces are brief, shal-low, scripted, and subject to constant surveillance. Shops and malls are oftencrowded, but there is nothing collective about them. That being so, the spir-itual supermarket is scarcely a development to be greeted as a sign of areligious renaissance.

Yet when we turn to a sophisticated, theoretically-informed empiricalstudy of shopping, such as Daniel Miller’s wryly entitled book, A Theory ofShopping,137 we find a different social world: Women, often on a tight budget,frequently in charge of children, engaged in the heavy physical labor of self-service, with the prospect of a lack of appreciation from their partners whenthey return home to cook supper. The fact that it is a woman’s world mayaccount for its disparagement; perhaps one might add masculine/feminineto our list of binary oppositions.

As well as being productive labor, shopping can be a site of ethicalstruggles. Green consumerism, for example, is the source of considerablemarket power. The late twentieth century saw a large number of profitableventures in green consumerism, including fairly traded tea and coffee, en-vironmentally friendly detergents, cosmetics free from testing on animals,organic and biodynamic produce, biodegradable packaging, recycling pro-grams for household waste, furniture from sustainable developments, ethicaland environmental investments, fuel-efficient engines, low emission fuels, re-newable energy sources, and, in the case of products lacking these qualities,consumer boycotts.

Green consumerism admittedly has its limitations. Green products carrya premium price, one which not all consumers will wish or be able to pay.Corporations parade the green credentials of their products, but there maybe an element of sham in this—it can be little more than a marketing ploy.Consumer boycotts can be circumvented: In the apartheid era, South Africanwine was re-routed via Eastern Europe and then exported to the West as aproduct of (state) socialism. And, of course, green consumption tends to bejust that: Consumption. If a commitment to the environment means consum-ing less, green consumerism is not the answer. It does not follow from theselimitations that green consumerism is either inauthentic, or superficial, or ofno consequence. “Think global, act local” is more than a slogan; it expressesa powerful social-political current in contemporary Western societies.

If there is more to the spiritual supermarket than culturally pessimisticsecularization theories recognize, a key issue needs to be confronted—theproblem of cultural reproduction. As Haynes points out,138 “Millions of


people take part in religious rituals, but they are not necessarily those oftheir parents”: Religious pluralism in Western Europe, often drawing onAsian spiritual traditions, appeals to many people who feel that WesternChristianity has accommodated itself too readily to the materialistic normsof contemporary society.

The question is, what will the current generation be able to transmit totheir own children? In Hervieu-Leger’s analysis,139 religious faith is decreas-ingly seen as a sacred trust to be passed on faithfully from generation togeneration, but as a cultural heritage on which people draw selectively andat their own discretion. Her own evidence from Catholics in France showsthat parents typically see the socialization process not as indoctrination inThe Faith but as a vehicle for equipping young people with the cognitive andaffective tools they will need to make their own mature choice of faith, ordecision to have no faith. On this view, the fundamental challenge to faith isneither reason nor rationalization, but cultural amnesia. The chain of mem-ory linking the present to both the past and the future is in danger of beingirreparably severed.

The cultural amnesia of a consumer society can, of course, be interpretedas a symptom of secularization: Each succeeding generation has a depletedstock of religious capital to pass on to its descendants.140 In opposition to thisinterpretation, we argue, following Beckford’s lead,141 that what is takingplace is the deregulation of religion. Far from being extinguished by globalconsumerism, religion becomes a potent cultural resource that can be drawnon selectively and creatively in pursuit of projects asserting cultural identity.Cut free from their anchorage in traditional communities of faith and theauthority structures which govern them, religious ideals and symbols becomeincreasingly volatile and destabilizing.

The much debated and seemingly ambivalent relationship between re-ligion and consumerism therefore raises the intriguing question whether thesame (or closely related) religious practises can, on one level, be shaped bythe consumerist ethos of choice and individualism and, on another level,serve as a discourse critical of “late capitalism?” Such ambivalence, we con-tend, does indeed characterize certain contemporary religious communities:Jean and John Comaroff thus describe situations where “Pentecostalismmeets neoliberal enterprise (. . . ) offering everything from cures for depres-sion to financial advice to remedies for unemployment,”142 thereby balanc-ing strategies of accommodation with globalized capitalism with the earlier-mentioned “creation of space”143 for the marginalized.

“De-Secularization”: Globalization and “Lliquid Modernity” as “Crisis”

In the concluding section of this paper, we formulate the emerginghypothesis that the various, and in many respects very different, forms of


religion and religiosity discussed so far can be subsumed under an over-arching model. Jeff Haynes suggests that in normal circumstances mod-ernization results in secularization “except when religion finds or retainswork to do other than relating people to the supernatural.”144 Simultane-ously building on and departing from this argument, we have proposed thatthe millenarianism of the disenfranchized and the postmodern religiosityof affluent consumers represent different responses to the crises broughtabout by the forces of globalization: Heightened social inequalities andanomie-inducing individualism. We suggest that what Haynes portrays asthe “normal circumstances” of modernization were, on the contrary, his-torically unique experiences of solid modernity peculiar to the Keynesianwelfare state in (certain parts of) the Western world. In the contemporaryera of economic globalization, however, the disempowerment of the na-tion state and the disintegration of welfare systems have granted renewedrelevance and urgency to the social and psychological “work” traditionallydone by religion145—including the provision of networks of sociality, sol-idarity, and meaning and of anxiety-coping mechanisms. Whilst in broadagreement with Bauman’s assessment of the structural, psychological, andhuman consequences of globalization,146 we have challenged his earlier-quoted assessment of contemporary society as indifferent to notions of im-mortality and transcendence. We now conclude by integrating our obser-vations into a theoretical synthesis of Bourdieu’s account147 of the culturaleffects of “crisis” with Beck’s historical sociology of contemporary “risksociety.”

Pierre Bourdieu argues that crises turn people’s habitus, their largelyunconscious categories, tastes and predispositions that constitute the com-monsensical cultural backdrop to their lives, and doxa, the “universe of theundiscussed,” into discourse. Previously taken-for-granted cultural meaningis thus brought to the forefront of social actors’ consciousness and self-understanding. Culture becomes ethnicity by virtue of being politicized148

and hence the basis for political claims and demands as well as the reflexiveground of self-definition. Steven Vertovec149 has shown the contemporaryrelevance of this theoretical model in the context of one of the empiri-cal examples discussed earlier, by arguing that the interest taken by dias-pora Hindus (and their active participation) in “homeland” politics reflectsuch politicization brought about by the unsettling crisis of migration andliving/surviving in culturally alien as well as economically hostile environ-ments. However, experiences of crises appear to be far more endemic tothe globalized (and liquidly modern) condition. Haynes, for example, de-scribes “postmodern uncertainty” as unsettling if not unbearable.150 Follow-ing Anthony Giddens’ assessment of the value of predictable, socially re-productive routine behavior for the maintenance of ontological security,151


we need to rethink the countercultural potential of religious beliefs, rit-uals, and identities in a globalizing world.152 Thus we return to the “cul-tural values of human experience” that Castells juxtaposes to the contem-porary and historically unique experiences brought about by the techno-logical revolution of the Information Age—the “space of flows” that isthe network society and “timeless time” including ideological and techno-logical attempts to “deny death.”153 In contrast, by ordering domestic andfrequently public space as well as by structuring daily routines, calendartime and individuals’ life-cycles,154 religion indeed appears ideally placedto counteract the unpredictability, virtuality and ephemerality of the con-temporary world: Simultaneously as an organizing principle of time- andspace-bound human lives and as a cosmology of transcendence centeredon the inevitability rather than the denial of death. Such counteraction of-ten appears to be reflexive: Even Western Europe, which might appear tobe the showcase of secularization if measured by declining church atten-dance/public worship and the individualization of values, thus exhibits ashift in—rather than the often proclaimed disappearance of—religiosity.155

Haynes corroborates this by arguing that today “millions of [Europeans]take part in religious rituals, but they are not necessarily those of their par-ents” and it therefore cannot be concluded that “Britons, French, Spaniardsand so on are (. . . ) becoming less interested in the spiritual and religious.”156

Moreover, the ideology of global capitalism and religious-cum-cultural val-ues can coexist within groups and individual social actors, being drawnupon according to context. This is powerfully illustrated by, for example,many in the Sikh and Hindu diaspora communities: An emphasis on profes-sional achievement—and hence successful participation in the global net-work society—coexists with a clear preference for ethnic/religious (and fre-quently caste-) endogamy157; cultural continuity and religious identities, itappears, can sit alongside an occupational orientation towards the space offlows.

Exacerbated social inequalities and the psychological effects of individ-ualization have already been shown to offer powerful incentives for the con-temporary religious resurgence in its heterogeneous manifestations, rang-ing from “fundamentalist” politics to a new middle-class religiosity partlymolded by the ideological practises and tenets of consumerism. Returningto the question as to what defines liquid modernity, we may add a pro-foundly significant cultural—or, perhaps more accurately, epistemological—dimension to such socioeconomically induced and individually enduredcrises. According to Jean-Francois Lyotard, the postmodern condition ischaracterized by an “incredulity towards metanarratives,” “the ‘crisis’ of sci-entific knowledge (. . . ) represent[ing] an internal erosion of the legitimacyprinciple of knowledge.”158 A few years and the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl


later, Ulrich Beck argued that reflexive modernization had resulted in a newform of secularization no longer aimed at religious institutions but at themodern faith in science and progress:

[S]cience has changed from an activity in the service of truth to an activitywithout truth(. . . ). The scientific religion of controling and proclaiming truth has been secularizedin the course of reflexive scientization. The truth claim of science has not withstoodpenetrating self-examination (. . . ).159

Bauman has made a related and relevant argument in speaking of a “moralcrisis” associated with the decline of the modern institutions and discoursesof (universal) morality. “Rather than seeking support of the law-like, deper-sonalized rules aided by coercive powers,” Bauman argues, liquid moder-nity “brings re-enchantment” and heralds a new-found respect for humanemotions, moral ambiguity and “the inexplicable” along with “mistrust ofunemotional, calculating reason.”160

Beck also argues that risk society has “subverted and nullified” themodern “law of differentiation.” Consequently, “monopolies are breakingup—the monopolies of science on rationality, of men on professions, of mar-riage on sexuality, of politics on policy.”161 Synthesizing Beck’s assessmentof an epistemological crisis besetting the modern scientific paradigm withhis observation of the processes of dedifferentiation, a model capable ofsubsuming the various empirical and theoretical trajectories explored in thispaper emerges: Globalization, as defined and analyzed by Bauman, Castells,Beck and others, entails economic polarization, social atomization, as well ascultural crises that transform taken-for-granted, ascribed or inherited mean-ing into discourse. Aided by a loss of faith in the paradigm of science andreason,162 and by widespread disillusionment with modern politics, the var-ious projects aimed at repoliticizing religion examined above constitute,we would argue, reflexive (and selective) engagements with religious tra-ditions that challenge the modern monopoly of secular politics over thepublic sphere. Millenarian and radical movements among the marginalizedand those fearing disenfranchizement grow out of crises and self-consciouslysubvert the secular “confinement” of religion to people’s private lives.163 Adifferent form of dedifferentiation can be discerned among the relative, orat least temporary, “winners”: While consumerism has arguably colonizedreligious beliefs and identities, the latter are still (and despite their com-modification) capable of revealing the political and psychological effects ofglobalization. Among other things, religions explain and reassure. As wehave seen, there is an acute need for explanation and reassurance in a worldincreasingly defined by networks and flows as much as by inequality andsolitude.


CONCLUDING REMARKS

Asked to comment on the contemporary significance of religion,Manuel Castells contrasts Europe to the rest of the world:

Religion is a fundamental dimension of human existence (. . . ). And religious identityis increasing all over the world as a source of meaning. It is only Europe that feelsthat it is beyond this need. This would mean the absolute triumph of reason, but weknow that this is not the case; we know that people have some deeper feelings, aboutlove, about search, about fear, about protection, that cannot be found in their imme-diate experience. (. . . ) [T]he fact that in Europe religion became institutionalized inoppressive apparatuses (. . . ) insured the durability of Christianity but also cut it offfrom the inner life of many people. America, and the rest of the world, has a morepersonal, flexible approach to religion, sometimes as a deep experience, but some-times also as a consumer good or as soap opera, which makes religion more humanand, ultimately, more effective in securing people in a world of fear and aggression.164

Castells thus corroborates the now common acknowledgement that “withthe exception of much of Western Europe, the secularization thesis has notcome to pass.”165 As we have seen, however, there is a strong case to ar-gue that even European religiosity has not disappeared but has been re-shaped by an ethos of choice, individualism and consumption. On anotherlevel, Castells’ observations condense important aspects of this paper re-lating to many people’s quest for meaning, community and psychologicalsecurity. Contrary to the assertion that “God is dead,”166 we have arguedthat religion is of renewed significance to those excluded from the domi-nant nodes in the space of flows167 as well as to many among the “included,”to disenfranchized “vagabonds” as much as to participating (yet fearful)consumers and “tourists.”168 Globalization has increased social inequalityand exacerbated individualization. New patterns of social stratification andexclusion as well as a dominant culture of atomizing consumerism havebroadened the spectrum of religious identities and discourses, which nowrange from “fundamentalist,” radical resistance to commodified religiosity.Whilst the empirical record unequivocally suggests that new manifestationsof religion are emerging under the qualitatively novel historical conditionof liquid modernity, this article can merely hope to help pave the way to-wards future research. Among the questions raised here and yet to be ex-plored in more detail, we anticipate issues of human agency, the transforma-tion of millenarian resistance into violent radicalism, the consequences of a(widely perceived) epistemological crisis besetting the paradigm of modernscience, and the counter-hegemonic potential of consumed spirituality to in-form many a future reflection on the relationship between globalization andreligion.


ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for a Special ResearchFellowship that made the work underlying substantial parts of this articlepossible.

ENDNOTES

1. Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 39–65.2. Zygmunt Bauman and Keith Tester, Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman (Cambridge:

Polity, 2001), p. 96.3. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2000).4. Ninian Smart quoted in Fiona Bowie, The Anthropology of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell,

2000), p. 24.5. Alan Aldridge, Religion in the Contemporary World (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 31.6. Benson Saler, Conceptualizing Religion (New York: Berghahn, 2000).7. Saler, Religion, p. 25.8. Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 10.9. Beck, Globalization, p. 11.

10. Bauman, Liquid Modernity.11. Beck, Globalization.12. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: self and society in the late modern age

(Cambridge: Polity, 1991).13. Also see Roland Robertson, “After Nostalgia? Wilful Nostalgia and the Phases of Glob-

alization.” In Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity, ed. B. Turner (London: Sage,1990), p. 53: Robertson provides a different though in many respects complementarymodel, which distinguishes between a first phase of globalization (roughly dated “from1880 through the first quarter of the twentieth century”) and a second phase. This sec-ond (and contemporary) phase, Robertson argues, “is closely related to the rise of post-modernist ways of thinking (. . . ) began in the 1960s [and] involves the reconstructionand problematization of the four major reference points of globalization (societies, in-dividuals, international relations and humankind) [as well as] the strengthening of theparticular-universal ‘dialectic.”

14. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973).15. Bauman, Liquid Modernity.16. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 2000), p. 275. Also see Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony andSocialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985).

17. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000 [1996]):Castells arguably works with the clearest notion of a radical historical rupture or dis-continuity between industrial modernity and the information age. The revolutionary de-velopment and refinement of communication- and information technologies, particularlysince the 1970s, thus emerges as a crucial watershed in human history, marking the onsetof the network society.

18. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society (London: Sage, 1992).19. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Hamish Hamilton,

1992).20. Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity.21. David McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1998).22. Stanley Tambiah, Leveling Crowds (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1996).


23. Roland Robertson and JoAnn Chirico, “Humanity, Globalization, and Worldwide Reli-gious Resurgence: a theoretical exploration.” Sociological Analysis, Vol. 46, No. 3, 1985:pp. 222, 240.

24. Zygmunt Bauman, The Individualized Society (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), p. 250.25. See, for example, Maurice Bloch, Prey into Hunter (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1992).26. Bryan Wilson, “Salvation, secularization, and de-moralization.” In The Blackwell Com-

panion to the Sociology of Religion, ed. R.K. Fenn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).27. Steve Bruce, Religion in the Modern World: from cathedrals to cults (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1996); God is Dead: secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell,2002).

28. See, for example, Bryan Turner (ed.), Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity (London:Sage, 1990) or Beck, Risk Society.

29. Carl Hallencreutz and David Westerlund, “Anti-Secularist Policies of Religion.” In Ques-tioning the Secular State: the worldwide resurgence of religion in politics, ed. D. Westerlund(London: Hurst, 1996).

30. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1977).

31. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000 [1996]); ThePower of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); End of Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000[1998]).

32. Castells, Network Society, p. 17.33. Beck, Risk Society, pp. 191–200.34. Beck, Globalization, p. 14.35. For example, Castells (End of Millennium) argues that the inability of Soviet statism to

respond to the new structural requirements (e.g. organizational flexibility and unfetteredinnovation) of the information age—itself defined as a novel mode of development thathas replaced industrialism and as such is not peculiar to (though, as it happens, has beenmonopolized by) the capitalist mode of production—was a root cause for the collapse ofcommunism.

36. Castells, Network Society, p. 147.37. Castells, Network Society, pp. 506–507.38. Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (Cambridge: Polity, 1998);

Liquid Modernity.39. Also see Scott Lash and John Urry, The End of Organized Capitalism (Madison: Univer-

sity of Wisconsin Press, 1987); and, more recently, Jean and John Comaroff, “MillennialCapitalism: first thoughts on a second coming.” In Millennial Capitalism and the Cultureof Neoliberalism, eds. J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff (Durham: Duke University Press,2001), p. 10: Jean and John Comaroff further corroborate that “the market and its masters(. . . ) of nomadic, deterritorialized investors, appear less and less constrained by the costsor moral economy of concrete labor.”

40. http://www.orf.at , accessed on 23/1/04.41. Bauman, The Individualized Society.42. Beck, Globalization.43. Bauman, Globalization.44. Beck, Risk Society, p. 137.45. Jean and John Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism,” p. 13.46. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Allen and Unwin,

1930).47. See, for example, Jeff Haynes, Religion in Global Politics (London: Longman, 1998);

Castells, Power of Identity.48. Peter Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: a global overview.” In The Desecu-

larization of the World: resurgent religion and world politics, ed. P. Berger (WashingtonD.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999).

49. Hallencreutz and Westerlund, “Anti-Secularist Policies of Religion.”


50. George Weigel, “Roman Catholicism in the Age of John Paul II.” In The Desecularizationof the World: resurgent religion and world politics, ed. P. Berger (Washington D.C.: Ethicsand Public Policy Center, 1999), p. 19.

51. Haynes, Religion in Global Politics.52. David Martin, “The Evangelical Protestant Upsurge and Its Political Implications.” In

The Desecularization of the World: resurgent religion and world politics, ed. P. Berger(Washington D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999).

53. Tu Weiming, “The Quest for meaning: religion in the People’s Republic of China.” InThe Desecularization of the World: resurgent religion and world politics, ed. P. Berger(Washington D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999).

54. Jonathan Sacks, “Judaism and Politic in the Modern World.” In The Desecularization ofthe World: resurgent religion and world politics, ed. P. Berger (Washington D.C.: Ethicsand Public Policy Center, 1999).

55. Peter van der Veer,Religious Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994);Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave (Princeton University Press, 1999).

56. Given that the term “fundamentalism” is steeped in the history of American Protes-tantism and tends to evoke derogatory connotations, we follow Haynes’ lead (Religion inGlobal Politics) in opting for the term “Islamicism” to denote a heterogeneous range ofreligiously revivalist and politically oriented movements.

57. Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God (Cambridge: Polity, 1994).58. See, for example, the seminal Fundamentalism Project edited by Martin Marty and Scott

Appleby: Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Fun-damentalisms and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Fundamentalismsand the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Accounting for Fundamen-talisms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

59. Castells, Network Society.60. Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity, p. 134.61. Castells, Power of Identity.62. Manuel Castells and Martin Ince, Conversations with Manuel Castells (Cambridge: Polity,

2003), pp. 149–150.63. Emile Durkheim, Suicide (London: Routledge, 2002 [1897]).64. Kenneth Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth: a study of millenarian activities (Oxford:

Blackwell, 1969), pp. 8, 105.65. Burridge, New Heaven, p. 108.66. Susumu Shimazono, “The Development of Millennialistic Thought in Japan’s New Reli-

gions.” In New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change, ed. J. Beckford (London:Sage, 1986), p. 56.

67. Burridge, New Heaven, p. 112.68. Gary Ferraro, Cultural Anthropology (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1992), p. 292.69. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World.”70. Bauman, Globalization.71. Robert Bellah, “New Religious Consciousness and the Crisis in Modernity.” In The

New Religious Consciousness, eds. C.Y.Glock and R.N. Bellah (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1976), pp. 337–339.

72. Gananath Obeyesekere, “The Cult of (Huniyan): a new religious movement in Sri Lanka.”In New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change, ed. J. Beckford (London: Sage,1986), pp. 214–218.

73. Edward Evans-Prichard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1976 [1937]).

74. Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London: Routledge and KeganPaul, 1978 [1922]), pp. 414–427.

75. Burridge, New Heaven, p. 34.76. For comparable observations concerning the effect of improved means of communica-

tion on the spread of new religious movements in post-World War II Western Europe, seeJames Beckford and Martine Levasseur, “New Religious Movements in Western Europe.”


In New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change, ed. J. Beckford (London: Sage,1986), pp. 31–32.

77. See, for example, Michael Storper, “Lived Effects of the Contemporary Economy: glob-alization, inequality, and consumer society.” In Millennial Capitalism and the Cultureof Neoliberalism, eds. J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff (Durham: Duke University Press,2001), p. 89.

78. Castells, Power of Identity, p. 79.79. Castells, Power of Identity, p. 74.80. Castells, Power of Identity, p. 80.81. James Scott, Moral Economy of the Peasant: rebellion and subsistence in South East Asia

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).82. Castells, Power of Identity, p. 77.83. Robertson and Chirico, “Humanity, Globalization, and Worldwide Religious

Resurgence,” pp. 238–239.84. See, for example, Haynes, Religion in Global Politics.85. David Martin, “The Evangelical Protestant Upsurge and Its Political Implications,” p. 41.86. Such observations resonate with the “instrumentalist paradigm of ethnicity,” according to

which ethnic/religious identities can play significant economic, political as well as possiblypsychological roles—including the provision of networks of solidarity, alliance, meaning,and coherence—in the lives of individuals. See Abner Cohen, Custom and Politics in Ur-ban Africa (London: Routledge, 1969) and, more recently, Peter Delius, “Sebtakgomo;Migrant Organization, the ANC and the Sekhukhuneland revolt.” Journal of SouthernAfrican Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1989: 581–617.

87. Castells, Network Society.88. Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums.” New Left Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2004: 5–34.89. Jean and John Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism,” pp. 25–26.90. Bauman, Globalization.91. Bauman, Liquid Modernity; The Individualized Society; Wasted Lives (Cambridge: Polity,

2004).92. Bauman, Liquid Modernity; The Individualized Society;93. Beck, Risk Society, p. 137.94. Jean and John Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism,” p. 21.95. Bridget Anderson, Doing the Dirty Work: the global politics of domestic labour (London:

Zed Books, 2000), pp. 38, 154.96. See, for example, Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of

World Order (London: Touchstone, 1998); Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1997).

97. Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God, p. 11.98. Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese neo-Buddhist religious movement, was responsible for the

nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in March 1995, killing 12 and injuring some 5500people. Its spiritual leader, Shoko Asahara, was sentenced to death by a Japanese courtin February 2004 (www.newsbox.msn.co.uk accessed on 2/27/04).

99. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: the global rise of religious violence(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

100. Juergensmeyer, Terror, pp. 190–191.101. Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism (Oxford: Berg, 2001).102. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics (London:

Hurst, 1996).103. Hansen, Saffron Wave.104. Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 1.105. This form of status anxiety was also reflected in widespread (and violent) middle-class,

upper-caste opposition to V.P. Singh’s government’s decision in 1990 to implement theso-called Mandal recommendation to increase “the number of places reserved for the so-called backward castes in education institutions and government service” (van der Veer,Religious Nationalism, p. 4).


106. See, for example, Haynes, Religion in Global Politics, pp. 170–187; Catarina Kinnvall,“Nationalism, religion and the search for chosen traumas: Comparing Sikh and Hinduidentity constructions.” Ethnicities, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2002: pp. 98–99.

107. According to the controversial and contested Hindutva version of history, Ayodhya wasthe birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram and center of his kingdom as depicted in theRamayana. A temple marking Ram’s birthplace, so the Hindu nationalist narrative con-tinues, was destroyed by the Babar, founder of the Mughal dynasty, in 1528 and replacedby a mosque.

108. Chetan Bhatt, “Dharmo Rakhshati Rakshitah: Hindutva movements in the UK.” Eth-nic and Racial Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2000: 559–593; Parita Mukta, “The Public Faceof Hindu Nationalism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2000: 442–466.

109. Beck, Globalization.110. We here borrow David McCrone’s terminology and definition of ethnicity as “politicized

culture” (Sociology of Nationalism).111. Steven Vertovec, The Hindu Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2000).112. For a detailed discussion of these ideological contradictions between ‘calibrated global-

isation’ and swadeshi economic nationalism, also see Hansen (Saffron Wave) and Bhatt(Hindu Nationalism).

113. Thomas Blom Hansen, “The Ethics of Hindutva and the Spirit of Capitalism.” In The BJPand the Compulsion of Politics in India, eds. T.B. Hansen and C. Jaffrelot (Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press, 1998).

114. See Christian Karner, The Categories of Hindu Nationalism: a neo-structuralist analysisof the discourse of Hindutva (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, forthcoming).

115. Bauman, Liquid Modernity; The Individualized Society; Beck, Globalization.116. Castells, Power of Identity, p. 26.117. Juergensmeyer, Terror.118. Though their wider contexts, demands, numerical strength, and conditions of possibility

differ greatly, the middle-class constituencies of Hindu nationalism and Aum Shinrikyorespectively provide but two well-documented instances of religious reactions against thefear of marginalization.

119. Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity, pp. 97–98.120. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (London: Penguin, 1991 [1975]).121. Post-9/11 history and heightened security measures against the ever present risk of ter-

rorist attacks (including the extensive use of close circuit television) provide but thearguably strongest challenges against Bauman’s notion of the demise, or redundancy, ofthe panopticon.

122. Bryan Turner, Religion and Social Theory (London: Sage, 1991), p. 241.123. Beck, Risk Society, p. 100.124. Bauman develops these and similar themes in two of his most recent books, The Individ-

ualized Society, and Society under Siege (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).125. Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement: the celebration of self and the sacralization of

modernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 102.126. Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: Sage, 1991), p.

126.127. David Lyon, Jesus in Disneyland: religion in postmodern times (Cambridge: Polity, 2000).128. Alan Aldridge, Consumption (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), p. 7.129. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (Second Edition) (London:

Heinemann, 1979).130. Bryan Wilson, “Salvation, secularization, and de-moralization,” p. 49.131. Haynes, Religion in Global Politics.132. George Ritzer, Enchanting a Disenchanted World: revolutionizing the means of Consump-

tion (London: Sage, 1999).133. Robert Bocock, Consumption (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 50.134. Bruce, Religion in the Modern World.


135. Reginald Bibby, Fragmented Gods: the poverty and potential of religion in Canada(Toronto: Stoddart, 1987).

136. Bauman, Liquid Modernity.137. Daniel Miller, A Theory of Shopping (Cambridge: Polity, 1998).138. Haynes, Religion in Global Politics, p. 67.139. Daniele Hervieu-Leger, Religion as a Chain of Memory (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers

University Press, 2000 [1993]).140. Bruce, God is Dead, pp. 71–73.141. James Beckford, Religion and Advanced Industrial Society (London: Unwin Hyman,

1989); Social Theory and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).142. Jean and John Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism,” p. 23.143. Martin, “The Evangelical Protestant Upsurge and Its Political Implications.”144. Haynes, Religion in Global Politics, p. 216.145. Ferraro, Cultural Anthropology.146. Bauman, Globalization; The Individualized Society.147. Bourdieu, Outline.148. McCrone, Sociology of Nationalism.149. Vertovec, Hindu Diaspora.150. Haynes, Religion in Global Politics, p. 214.151. Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Cambridge: Polity, 1984).152. For a relevant psychoanalytical discussion of religious nationalism as a source of onto-

logical security and an antidote to “existential anxiety” in times of globalization, also seeKinnvall, “Chosen traumas.”

153. Castells, Network Society, pp. 481–484.154. See, for example, Jean Holm with John Bowker (eds.), Rites of Passage (London: Pinter,

1994); Sacred Place (London: Pinter, 1994).155. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World.”156. Haynes, Religion in Global Politics, p. 67.157. See, for example, Roger Ballard (ed.), Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain

(London: Hurst, 1994); Karner, The Categories of Hindu Nationalism.158. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 1984), p. 39.159. Beck, Risk Society, p. 166. Italics in the original.160. Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 33.161. Beck, Risk Society, p. 232.162. As is well known (see, for example, Martin Marty and Scott Appleby’s Fundamentalism

Project), radical/“fundamentalist” movements tend to call for the reordering of politicalstructures along lines allegedly sanctioned by religious texts and traditions, whilst oftenembracing technology—and hence some of the applications of modern science—as part oftheir strategies of mobilization and dissemination. In other words, they exhibit a selectiveappropriation of science as a means to religious ends.

163. For a comparable and relevant argument concerning the renewed mobilizing potentialof ethnic identities in times of “late capitalist modernity,” see Steve Fenton, Ethnicity(Cambridge: Polity, 2003).

164. Castells and Ince, Conversations, p. 111.165. Haynes, Religion in Global Politics, p. 215.166. Bruce, God is Dead.167. Castells, Network Society; Power of Identity; End of Millennium.168. Bauman, Globalization.

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Theorizing Religion in a Globalizing World