Toward a Sociology of Religious Commodification
Toward a Sociology of Religious Commodification
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走向宗教商品化的社会学
DOI：
10.1002/9781444320787.ch25
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发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
P. Kitiarsa
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
P. Kitiarsa
The symbiotic interrelation between religious faiths/institutions and market economy has always loomed large in the sociology of human religious experience. In this chapter, I discuss the definition, scope, contents, and significance of religious commodification. My discussion deals particularly with how and why religious commodification has become invisible and noticeable across major religious traditions. I use an ethnographic case study of the mega amulet cult of Chatukham-Rammathep in Thailand to supplement my interpretation of how religious commodification has emerged as one of prominent aspects of private and public religious life. I propose that religious commodification as a key sociological concept and a form of complex religio-cultural phenomena must be understood through its contextualized backgrounds, processes, and implications. My stance is different from the view that modernization and commodification have either degraded or damaged religions. Rather, I suggest that religious commodification has produced some lively and open landscapes of interpretation across religious traditions and societies. To some extent, religious commodification exists everywhere as it forms a crucial part of complicated human religious ventures. Indeed, the rise and fall of a faith is inseparable from its marketable qualities and entrepreneur leadership. My argument is that religious commodification is a problematic, yet persistently growing field of sociological investigation particularly in the studies of post-9/11 public religion. The emergence of the sociology of religious commodification at the turn of the twenty-first century offers an alternative way and method for the sociology of religion to speak critically about complex tension and fragmentation of modern/postmodern social life. It also reflects how an academic discipline deals with the global explosion of religious faiths and movements at both conceptual and phenomenal levels.
