Week 4 - Theoretical Reading - Spirituality & the Rebranding of Religion

In this article, Carrette and King discuss the concept of "capitalist spirituality", which has a specific economic agenda and is now beginning to inhabit the cultural space that was once the domain of traditional religions (61).

Rather than try to define "spirituality" and analyse the situation through a specific definition, Carrette & King focus on the socio-policital consequences of people trying to define spirituality. They look at the agenda behind certain groups having particular constructions of spirituality and "branding" it in a certain way, and they try to see who benefits from this agenda (61).

The aim of the article is to challenge the "individualist and corporatist monopoly of the term 'spirituality' and the cultural space that this demarcates at the beginning of the twenty-first century for promotion of values of consumerism and corporate capitalism" (62). Carrette and King want to challenge this because, in their view, it is troubling that the modern spirituality that is being promoted does little to address the status quo and therefore does little in the way of helping make significant changes in one's lifestyle and behaviour (presumably making positive changes to one's life as being one of the main benefits of spirituality) (62).

In essence, the article raises concerns about the branding of spirituality as a clever way to make people think they are becoming more spiritual, and therefore improving their life, when in actual fact it is serving a somewhat concealed socio-economic agenda in that it is helping to "smooth-out resistance to the growing power of corporate capitalism and consumerism as the defining ideology of our time" (65).

In effect, rather than opening up spirituality as something that is available to everyone (which is what this rebranding appears to promise people), it plants spirituality within a privatised and conformist space. By challenging this, and questioning the agenda behind the rebranding, Carrette & King believe a space will open up that will allow for "alternative, more socially engaged constructions" of the term "spirituality" to be expressed (62).

Reference


Carrette J and R King. 2102. Spirituality and the Re-branding of Religion. In Lynch G. and J. Mitchell with A. Strhan. Eds., Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader. 59-70. London and New York: Routledge.