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To: Tidsskrift for Kirke Religion Samfunn
Title: Religion and Consumer Culture
MA Tuomas Martikainen
ÅboAkademiUniversity
Department of Comparative Religion
Biskopsgatan 10 B
20500 Åbo
Finland
E-mail:
SUMMARY
The topic of this article, religion and consumer culture, highlights the fact that religion has entered the market of ideas and experiences. Even though being essentially a late modern phenomenon, the historical roots of the development can be traced back to the spread of capitalism and to the ideology of consumerism. Consuming religion has become a distinct feature of late modern religiosity. The initial question was how different contemporary theorists of modern religion (Bruce, Luckmann, Stark and Bainbridge) have understood the consuming religionist and the religious market. Noticing an underdeveloped idea of both the consumer and the market, I sought help from other sociologists (Bocock, Featherstone, Lehtonen) to get a better idea of contemporary consumption. Combining ideas from various theorists (mainly Luckmann and Featherstone) I was able to show the sometimes playful nature of contemporary religion that goes unnoticed, if the researcher still sees religion solely as a serious search for the meaning of life.
Religion and Consumer Culture
INTRODUCTION
Market economy, consumption and consumers are central themes in attempts to understand contemporary western religiosity. The theme is most apparent in the discussion of New Age spirituality and the pluralistic religious markets, but it has also been related to the religious situation in western societies in general. Some distinct approaches have emerged: for instance, the rational choice theory of Stark and Bainbridge (1987) and the privatisation thesis of Thomas Luckmann (1967). In general, there seems to be a broad consensus regarding the forms which ‘the religious market’ has taken, but the theoretical explanations for them are very different indeed.
In the following paper I will present and develop an argument which connects certain features of contemporary religiosity with sociologists’ writings on consumer culture. The main point is that consumption, in the framework of market economy, has become an essential feature of life in western societies. In the realm of religion, this development has led to changes in traditional religious organisations as well as to the emergence and large-scale spread of new forms of religion. The change has taken place as a mass phenomenon in the post-war period and it can be observed at least in western societies.
First, I will present the emergence of contemporary consumer society. Second, I will discuss different theoretical perspectives on consumer culture. Third, I shall briefly outline various, elementary theoretical explanations in relation to religion, consumers, consumption and markets. Fourth, I will offer a preliminary consumer culture perspective of religion. Finally, I shall summarise the paper.
THE RISE OF CONSUMER SOCIETY
The rise of consumer society is closely related to the ideology of consumerism. Consumerism “is the active ideology that the meaning of life is to be found in buying things and pre-packaged experiences” (Bocock 1993:50). The argument is that the ideology of consumerism has moved to a central position in western societies during the post-war period (Bocock 1993:5). However, it should be made clear that consumption is still seen “as a means for the fulfilment of human living, but not as the sole goal of social, cultural and economic life” (Bocock 1993:7, italics original). If we accept these presuppositions, then the rise of consumer society can be traced back to certain historical and social contexts, from which the ideology of consumerism has risen to its current hegemonic position. The following section is based on Robert Bocock’s description of the emergence of consumerism (1993:10-33).
Bocock distinguishes four stages in the development of consumerism, which may be called early modern, metropolitan, mass consumption and post-modern[1]. First, the early modern stage of consumption originates in seventeenth-century Northwest Europe influenced by puritan Calvinist ideas. The Protestant ascetic mode of life and hard work combined with surplus profit, which was invested instead of being spent on luxury commodities, laid the basis for an ideology that would be necessary for the emergence of the capitalistic mode of production. Later on, this mode of production with its related cultural values would emerge, e.g., in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Alongside this process other important changes took place in communication and transport, which meant that the aristocracy, country gentry and urban middle classes in provincial towns were able to follow the fashions of main centres more closely than before. Combined with the increasing availability of consumer goods – in the framework of free markets – this meant that a new kind of consumer culture had emerged within a restricted number of people. For this group of people consumption provided a means to distinguish themselves from other social groups through consumption.
Second, the metropolitan stage of consumerism refers to West European and North American metropolitan centres at the turn of the twentieth century. Large cities, such as Paris, Berlin, London and New York were places in which new forms of social as well as commercial activity were born. Department stores and flâneurs symbolise the change. The metropolitan anonymity and city location created an urban space of consumption and desires, where flâneurs strolled the streets, which were decorated with windows full of goods from all over the world and department stores offering sensations and lifestyles. The newly rich industrial entrepreneurs and their families adopted a consumerist orientation in order to distinguish themselves from other social groups. The two world wars and the depression in the 1930s slowed down the spread of these consumer practices to wider social strata in Europe. However, the industrial mass production necessary for widespread mass consumption was already there at the turn of the twentieth century.
Third, the mass consumption stage of consumerism started in West Europe in the 1950s. By this time, welfare and consumerism had spread to the working class. As the name suggests, this was the first period of mass consumption, where large numbers of people were able to live in a consumer society. However, the markets were still differentiated by occupational class and, especially at the lower end of the income scale, consumption centred on elementary mass products. Television and advertising, among other things, were main features in the spread of this consumerist ideology. With rising affluence, part of the population could invest its income in less elementary goods. The more affluent parts of the population, in large numbers, started to use consumption to create distinct ways of life with related privatised values. Still, even the less affluent ‘masses’ were drawn into consumerism through the work of the media with its representation of the lifestyles and consumption patters of the rich, and even though they could not live such lifestyles, they could desire them.
Fourth, the post-modern stage of consumption is characterised by the differentiated markets and segmented consumption patterns. Starting among youth in the 1970s and 1980s, consumption has lost some of its relation to occupational class.
It was not so much the external characteristics of these groups which were new and distinctive, characteristics which were measured by such variables as age, gender, ethnicity or socio-economic class, defined by occupation, but the internal dynamics of these new groups. These internal dynamics affected what might be called the social construction of a sense of identity for group members (Bocock 1993:27-28).
Consumption has become central in the creation of identity and to position one in society. Consumer goods and quality brands have become available to large numbers of people in a way that was not possible before. However, older consumer orientations still prevail in some segments of the population, but they have increasingly lost their importance. Examples of the meaning of consumerism can be seen, e.g., both in the consumer and the environmental movement, which have developed in the post-war period. The consumer movement is based on the protection and rights of the consumer in relation to the producers, whereas the environmental movement is critical of contemporary consumption and its exponents want to offer alternative lifestyles that are based on ‘sustainable’ consumption.
Through the lenses of these four periods we can see how the ideology of consumerism spreads to larger and larger groups of people in western societies. The more or less elitist consumerism of the early twentieth century turns to a mass phenomenon after the Second World War, only to be become differentiated and segmented in a new way after the 1960s and 1970s. Developments in transportation and communication as well as the spread of welfare go hand in hand with these tendencies. The role of media and advertising could not be understood if the means of communication, such as television, were not as largely spread as they are, which is related to the relative affluence of the post-war period. In the following part of the paper, the focus will be on the post-modern stage as this provides the background for contemporary consumer culture.
THEORISING CONSUMER CULTURE
Production and consumption in the settings of western market economy are not merely about filling people’s basic needs, such as food and shelter. Neither can consumption be unproblematically derived from production. Actually, consuming is an essential part of being a western individual and a member of society. To stay outside of consumer society is regarded as something strange and suspicious. Not to consume is to protest against social norms. But what is modern consumption all about? Mike Featherstone (1991:13-27) has outlined three main approaches that will elaborate different views of consumer culture. These perspectives can be called neo-Marxist, social consumption and playful consumption.
First, the neo-Marxist stance towards consumption is critical and the emphasis is on the production of commodities. The interest of the producers is to ‘educate the public’ and to ‘create new markets’. This involves a more or less conscious strategy to manipulate the consumers via media and advertising. This has led to a new, post-modern culture of free-floating meanings and signs. Traditional forms of social life become less relevant when stable meanings give way to ‘an endless flow of bizarre juxtapositions’. The consuming public is seen as a target or a manipulated mass that adapts the desires promoted by the producers. This cultural market can be described as one of overproduction, control and active manipulation of signs. The problem with this view is that it cannot deal convincingly with people’s real, differentiated responses to consumption. It seems to be an elitist critique of popular culture with an implicit presupposition that all mass culture is homogeneous and somehow of less worth than high culture.
Second, there is a view that can be called social consumption. It refers to the role of consumption in creating social relationships and lifestyles. In comparison to the neo-Marxist perspective the stress is on consumption, not production. Taste is an important feature of social consumption.
Consumption and lifestyle preferences involve discriminatory judgements which at the same time identify and render classifiable our own particular judgement of taste of others. Particular constellations of taste, consumption preferences and lifestyle practices are associated with specific occupation and class fractions, making it possible to map out the universe of taste and lifestyle with its structured oppositions and finely graded distinctions which operate within a particular society at a particular point in history (Featherstone 1991: 18).
This mode of consumption requires knowledge of goods and their correct use. This knowledge is available from the social reference group, but also, to a growing degree, from ‘the new cultural intermediaries’ that inform those interested of new trends, products and ways of life. The rapid circulation of goods and their growing number due to the globalisation of culture makes earlier distinctions of taste more difficult and problematic than before. The inflation and oversupply of symbolic goods creates uncertainties and a demand for more knowledge.
Third, playful consumption relates consumption to playfulness, emotional exploration and relationship-building. Consumption is a tool for disorder and creativity, not solely for order and control. Playful consumption reveals connections between the pre-modern, modern and post-modern where the culture of the carnivalesque –namely, ordered disorderliness– pervades, e.g., in contemporary shopping malls, media and travel. This leads to the aestheticisation of city culture and everyday life. However,
[t]he imagery may summon up pleasure, excitement, the carnivalesque and disorder, yet to experience them requires self-control and for those who lack such control there lurks in the background surveillance by security guards and remote-control cameras (Featherstone 1991:25).
Thus, the contemporary consumer culture is a playful and aesthetic combination of control and de-control, which requires a sensibility from its participant to draw the limits themselves, for otherwise the playfulness gets out of hand.
THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS FOR RELIGION AND MARKETS
In classical sociology of religion the emergence and the role of capitalism was an important theme in understanding religion and social life in western societies. For example, Max Weber argues in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958) that the emergence of capitalism is partially related to a certain understanding of Calvin’s and Luther’s teachings in a historically specific context of Protestantism. Furthermore, both Marx and Weber “thought that the Protestant Reformation was the seed-bed of political and economic individualism” (Turner 1991:155). The classic framework of thought was constituted by the traditional forms of organised religion, especially the Christian churches. Whereas the institutionalised forms of religion are of less importance today, the identification of the association of individualism, religion and capitalism or market economy is a major theme that leads us to one the most central features of contemporary religiosity.
Many contemporary researchers of religion link religion and the market economy in one way or another (for example, Bruce 1987; Davie 2000; Heelas 1996; Luckmann 1967). How do these scholars understand ‘the religious market’, ‘the religious community’, ‘the consumption of religious goods’ and the role of ‘the religious consumer’? Are they speaking metaphorically or is there really a religious market somewhere? The following section will present three approaches, which all try to link certain features of contemporary religiosity to western market economy.
Rational choice theory
Rational choice theory was one of the most debated theories of religion in the 1990s. Major proponents of the theory included, among others, Rodney Stark, William Sims Bainbridge and Roger Finke (Iannaccone 1991; Stark and Bainbridge 1987). The theory is meant to be a counter-theory to various secularisation theories. Rational choice theory has been heavily criticised (Bruce 1995, 1999b), but it has also received support (Hak 1998:403). Even though the theory is still under construction, its main characteristics are well known.
The main argument in rational choice theory is that religious pluralism enhances religious involvement, which is directly opposite to the proposition of many secularisation theories. Olson and Hadaway (1999:490) summarise this view in the following way:
religious pluralism fosters competition which makes each religious group work harder to meet the religious needs of the populace, thus involving more people in religion. Moreover, expanded religious choices increase the chances that any individual will become involved in some religious group. Far from undermining religion, pluralism strengthens religious involvement and commitment. By contrast, lack of competition makes religious monopolies “lazy” and unresponsive to religious consumers, thus lowering religious involvement.
The religious economies are characterised by four main variables. First, state regulation refers to the openness of the religious economy or market. Second, market share is the amount of adherents in relation to others. Third, pluralism is about the number of religious organisation in a particular area. Fourth, competition refers to the extent to which a particular organisation has access to resources. These are the central factors affecting the role of a particular organisation in its mission for growth (Olson and Hadaway 1999:491).
The relationship between the religious organisations or firms (producers) and individuals (consumers) is important in rational choice theory. Organisations work within the above mentioned preconditions and try to provide religious ‘products’ that attract the consumers. The harder the competition, the more the firms have to work in order to be successful. The consumers try to maximise their gains with minimum costs. The consumers act rationally and consume religion like any other secular commodity. Ultimately, the approach is based on the notion of compensator: “the promise of a future reward that cannot be tested by empirical means” (Nauta 1998:494). Religions can offer only compensators, because their rewards cannot be empirically shown. People can still desire religious rewards – depending on their personal preferences and the particular socio-cultural context – but they are, in the end, compensators.