The i-zation of Society, Religion, and Neoliberal Post-Secularism

By Adam Possamai

This book explores the elective affinity of religion and post-secularism with neoliberalism. With the help of digital capitalism, neoliberalism dominates, more and more, all aspects of life, and religion is not left unaffected. While some faith groups are embracing this hegemony, and others are simply following the signs of the times, changes have been so significant that religion is no longer what it used to be. Linking theories from Fredric Jameson and George Ritzer, this book presents the argument that our present society is going through a process of i-zation in which (1) capitalism dominates not only our outer, social lives (through, for example, global capitalism) but also our inner, personal lives, through its expansion in the digital world, facilitated by various i-technology applications; (2) the McDonaldization process has now been normalized; and (3) religiosity has been standardized. Reviewing the new inequalities present in this i-society, the book considers their impact on Jurgen Habermas’s project of post-secularism, and appraises the roles that various religions may have in supporting and/or countering this process. It concludes by arguing that Habermas’s post-secular project will occur but that, paradoxically, the religious message(s) will be instrumentalized for capitalist purposes. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Oct 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9789811059421

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© The Author(s) 2018

Adam PossamaiThe i-zation of Society, Religion, and Neoliberal Post-Secularismhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5942-1_1

1. Introduction

Adam Possamai¹ 

(1)

Western Sydney University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Marc Augé (2011: 30–31) hypothesizes that the second half of the twentieth century witnessed more radical scientific and technological changes than did the whole of the previous period since the birth of humanity. He then considers the twenty-first century and wonders if we should not now be studying even shorter periods of time, of perhaps ten or twenty years, in order to capture a similar breadth of rapid and critical social and cultural change initiated by radical innovations.

To illustrate the rapidity of change over the last twenty years, this introduction concentrates on three key examples. The first concerns the advancement of digital technology. In 1979, a 250 MB hard drive weighed 550 pounds and cost tens of thousands of dollars. In 2013, a 16 GB microSD card could hold the same amount of data as 64 of those twentieth-century hard drives, weighed less than a gram, and cost around ten dollars. Small, in this case, is not only beautiful, but also vastly more powerful. I am tempted to compare these advancements (although they have developed more quickly) to the progression from sailing across the oceans to flying above them. More people are now able to travel and at a faster pace, and this increased accessibility applies now also to information. This has important social and cultural implications. In line with Chap. 8’s exposition of the i-zation of society , I have to admit that I procured this information (prior to verification) from an Internet meme on Facebook (see Chap. 7).

The second example is more personal. In the 1980s, growing up in Belgium, I was using a personal computer free from any advertising and without an Internet connection. My parents would be watching television, with advertisements being shown both before and after a movie. Today, in Australia, I still use a personal computer, and used one to write this book. I listen to music (using this computer) via YouTube , and am bombarded with advertising not only before a full audio album but—and this appears to be a recent phenomenon—between tracks as well. My generation Z son uses an iPad to watch YouTube and he is exposed to publicity as well. He is a fan of a series of video clips that involve children of his age detailing their everyday lives, including minute details of the toys, computer games, and theme parks that they use and visit. These clips do not seem to be officially sponsored by any company (brand) and they receive hits (views) numbering in the hundreds of thousands. I live in Sydney, and when my son was younger, he used to regularly tell my wife and me about Legoland in San Diego, as if we only had to drive to the next suburb to get there. He obtains information from this series of clips about the new games he wants, though he did not realize a few years ago that in order to download a game at the press of a button, a credit card number and authorization is required. And for parents, this is not a magical number for making games appear out of thin air!

For my last example, I reminisce about my past as a generation X teen. If, at night, I had a few drinks with my friends and we discussed buying something or the other, the shops would be closed at that time, and by the next morning, we would have most likely changed our minds. Some time ago, my generation Y children had some friends over and had a few drinks as well. They talked about buying some ‘onesies’ (a type of animal costume influenced by Japanese manga media), logged onto the Internet, and ordered them straightaway. A couple of days later, my wife and I began filling out forms acknowledging receipt of the various parcels that arrived. While most shops are closed at night, the Internet is open twenty-four hours a day and can be accessed from home. The consequences of this include this new level of inconspicuous consumption. Featherstone (2013) recently made reference to these new shopping spaces ‘behind’ their ubiquitous screens, where we can ‘click and purchase’, leaving traces that are used by companies to algorithmically predict what we, as consumers, might want to buy in the future (see Chap. 6).

Religion is also affected by these new technologies. For example, Richardson and Pardun (2015) discover that some generation Y Christians carry a Bible application (app) on their iPhones. This can be accessed in between reading sundry SMS messages or checking the latest pictures on Instagram . By tapping various key words, specific passages from the Bible are easy to find. Some of these religious actors even use this app to check if their minister is correctly making reference to the holy book during the church ceremony. However, the same app can be used for another and quite different purpose. In Mehta (2013), we discover atheists who enjoy using this easy access to sacred scriptures to point out misquotations of the Bible by religious adherents, helping them to demonstrate what they see as inconsistencies in this holy book. We will come back to the religious apps in Chap. 8. Suffice to state at the moment that religious practices are affected by these developments, as are all social and cultural practices.

These new technologies are an outcome of the advancement of science, but science has not replaced religion, as was believed, wrongly, before the advent of globalization. Indeed, Gilbert Achcar (2015) points out that a few centuries have now passed since the scientific revolution and that religion has survived the process of secularization instigated by the 1789 French Revolution. No matter how our technologies advance, or how independent from their God people become, or even how certain atheists declaim about God’s non-existence, religion continues to operate. A philosopher such as Nietzsche can ‘kill’ God, but no philosopher or politician can get rid of religions; these are here to stay. Recent technological and scientific changes have not dispensed with religions—but they have certainly impacted on them.

As these social and technological changes are affecting our lives, religions cannot remain ‘pristine’ and apart from mundane matters. They have been standardized (Chap. 9) and greatly affected by a new level of calculative rationality (Chap. 10). These changes do not occur in a vacuum. They are driven by the extension of capitalism that is now fully established in the digital world (see Chap. 6). To understand how these new technologies are affecting religion, we also need to understand how neoliberalism (which is presented as a global civil religion in Chap. 11) is impacting on these technologies and on religion. The following section presents a short theoretical exploration of neoliberalism in order to ground the observations made above. This introduction then details the structure of the book and discusses the place of religion within the debates around it.

Neoliberalism

New technologies are not developed in a cultural void. They need to be supported, not only by people, but perhaps more importantly, by a structure and a culture. Leonardo da Vinci, it must be remembered, never commodified his great inventions. This was not because they were anti-religious, but because the spirit of capitalism, as detailed by Max Weber, did not exist in his lifetime. This came later, in the sixteenth century (see Appendix 1), and has developed into what is now called ‘neoliberalism’.

In the twenty-first century, personal observations such as those I provide above are strengthened by the academic study of hegemonic neoliberalism. According to Raewyn Connell and Nour Dados (see also Connell 2014),

[w]e live in a world of markets, we are constantly told, and have to do what markets require. Modern subjectivity is about selling the self, creating marketable narratives for Facebook , YouTube , and the next employer. Corporations not only buy and sell in markets. But they also create internal markets and profit centres, and constitute their workers as mini-firms, contractors. Government itself has to act like a firm, scale down debt, sell off unprofitable assets, lure foreign capital, and make a financial surplus. The modern university has to find a new business model, to become entrepreneurial, to produce what the market wants. (2014: 5)

Indeed, the goal of neoliberalism is to extend existing markets and to create new ones where they do not already exist (Connell 2014), and as is shown in Chap. 6, this goal has been extended to the digital world as well. In its simplest form, neoliberalism is a rhetoric about small governments and the free market (Cahill et al. 2012). It requires a floating currency market, a reduction of trade barriers, the privatization of the public sector, and the deregulation of industries. It also calls for a ‘New Public Management’ by which the public sector is pushed to operate in the same fashion as the private sector. It is known as ‘Thatcherism’ in the United Kingdom, ‘Reaganomics’ in the United States, ‘economic rationalism’ in Australia, and ‘economic fundamentalism’ in New Zealand. This ‘market thinking’ not only penetrates communities and families, it also affects the individual (Connell and Dados 2014).

Connell questions the idea that neoliberalism is a single doctrine and has thus focused her research on historical shifts in the ideology and practice of this ostensibly hegemonic force. Part of her work focuses on the birth of neoliberalism in Latin America, before the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I would like to continue in this spirit of revisionism by bringing to the present two key theories that emerged during the time that Thatcher and Reagan were world leaders—those of Fredric Jameson (Chaps 6 and 7) and George Ritzer (Chaps. 8 and 7)—and adapting them to our post-communist societies and to the contemporary world, arguably led by people such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Facebook’s Marc Zuckerberg. This new era marks an important techno-social impact, as suggested by Augé (2011).

As Connell and Dados (2014: 132) claim, 30 years after Thatcher and Reagan, 20 years after the peak of the Washington consensus, and 5 years after the global financial crisis, neoliberalism has certainly changed. Indeed, capitalism operates differently in different countries, and this divergence is becoming more extreme. It is for this reason that Mitchell Dean (2014) writes about the multiple forms and sometimes contradictory elements that are found in neoliberalism. He argues that neoliberalism is not reducible to a simple coherent ideology. He claims that it should instead be treated as a ‘thought collective’, that is, an organized group of individuals exchanging ideas within a common intellectual framework (Dean 2014: 151). The main aims of this collective are reinvigorating and maintaining free-market liberalism and influencing, if not appropriating, the powers of national and international organizations.

It must be noted, as argued in Neoliberalism: Beyond the Free Market (Cahill et al. 2012), that markets are not as ‘natural’ and as ‘free’ as neoliberal supporters claim. Neoliberalism is a product of the social and political forces which shape these markets. These forces constrain some actors in their market activities, yet favor others, allowing them to extend the scope of their movements. Further, the state had always had a strong role to play, despite a push for a reduced level of government. As Bloom (2016) reminds us, the growth of capitalism has depended on infrastructure built and employment relations regulated by the state.

Structure of the Book

Part I of this book focuses specifically on the relationship between religion and neoliberalism. Chapter 2 explores religions that are positively engaging with neoliberalism. It details two telling cases, the New Age (also called alternative spiritualities ), and the prosperity religious groups. These are both consuming religions but the former uses a type of free-floating approach (hyper-consumerism), whereas the latter follow the guidelines of an authority (hypo-consumerism ). In between the two extremes on this religious spectrum, more mainstream religions are also embracing changes brought about by neoliberalism. As fewer people attend religious ceremonies, many churches are moving with the times and using new marketing techniques to attract adherents. While Chap. 2 focuses on how religions deal with markets, Chap. 3 concentrates on how religions face new inequalities . It explores the work of faith-based organizations in deprived urban areas and in the developing world. In recent years, the roles of these organizations have been redefined and have come to provide a support, if not an alternative, to the welfare state. Chapter 3 also covers the changes imposed on chaplains in the university system and demonstrates how neoliberal requirements are affecting not only the higher education sector but also the work of this religious profession. It argues that although these groups and individuals attempt to resolve the discontent brought about by neoliberalism, they are also, paradoxically, giving further support to this way of thinking and acting. Chapter 4 delves into religions that are proposing an alternative view to that of neoliberalism , but claims that they are not having a significant impact. It also focuses on religious alternatives such as those violently proposed by some Muslim radicals and claims that their acts of terrorism are, in fact, again paradoxically, reinforcing neoliberalism . After the exploration of these different relations between religion and neoliberalism , Chap. 5 questions our past ways of understanding religion. It provides a social constructionist understanding of religion—that it is defined according to a context and a time period, rather than being universal. Emile Durkheim’s functional understanding of religion is then applied in the neoliberal context. This chapter claims that, increasingly, religion is no longer a tool for collective consciousness but is mainly used as a means of increasing individual consciousness with regards to developing, healing, and entertaining the self. Rather than being a social glue for a collective, it is now a social (and personal) glue for the self.

Part II considers key critical theorists and provides a broader context to changes that are affecting religion. It returns, more specifically, to the impact of the pervasive new technologies on religion. The main argument of Part II is that current social and cultural changes taking place in our societies are going to accelerate the linking of religion and neoliberalism , thanks especially to the current ‘i-zation’ of society (Chap. 8). Taking into account that neoliberalism has assumed a different form today, Chaps. 6–9 reprise the key theories of Jameson and Ritzer, which have provided an explication of capitalism at the end of the twentieth century, and adapt them to the present (twenty-first) century, and more specifically, to religion. One reason for utilizing these theories is that they have already been tested and found successful in accounting for changes in the field of religion (Drane 2006; Possamai 2005). If, therefore, they are theoretically adapted, they can provide a stronger understanding of current variations in this field. These theories are intrinsically diachronic and are thus ideal for adaptation to today’s social and cultural mutations. Chapter 6 refers to the notion of digital capitalism (as a further extension of capitalism) and Chap. 7 to the Pygmalion process , an extension to everyday life of the pastiche approach formerly found in art and popular culture . Chapter 8 undertakes a study of how new technologies, specifically in the form of apps , are ‘incrusted’ on the self almost permanently and help us in our religious and productive lives. Chapter 9 contains an exploration of the contemporary standardization (see Gauthier et al. 2013; Roy 2008) and branding (see Einstein 2008; Usunier and Stolz 2014) of religion. This phenomenon is an outcome of the McDonaldization process, the increasing pervasiveness of which Chap. 8 calls the ‘i-zation of society’.

Chapter 10 introduces Jurgen Habermas’s project of post-secularism (i.e. the management of communication between religious and atheist groups in the public sphere) and uses Shari’a as a case study to argue that in ‘i-society’ (Chap. 8), post-secularism can be thought of as a social model wherein religion becomes more and more standardized to fit with a neoliberal ideology. In this situation, religion is not so much an agent of communicative action in what Habermas refers to as the lifeworld ; it has instead, paradoxically, been instrumentalized (or ‘colonized’, to use Habermas’s term) by neoliberal rationalization. Post-secularism will be successful, but not in the way it was intended by Habermas. It will be colonized, McDonaldized, and as this chapter argues, i-zed.

Chapter 11 makes the statement that just as religion was the sacred canopy in Middle Ages Europe, and as nationalism and its politics were the dominant civil religion during modernity, today, neoliberalism is the dominant, and perhaps the most global, civil religion . It is also hegemonic over both the religious and the civil spheres. This argument leads to the final part and chapters of this book, which focus more on policy. Chapter 12 reviews the literature on religion and taxes, leading to Chap. 13’s presentation of a way forward. This final chapter proposes the creation of a global compassionate tax , that is, a tax on non-charitable dealings by religious organizations. Since religion has changed during the era of neoliberalism , we now have to think about it differently. Chapters 12 and 13 claim that as religions are gradually mimicking, and even becoming, business groups, they should be tax exempt only for their specific secular charity work—acknowledging the hard work that many religious groups perform in the charity domain. We can no longer take for granted that ‘religion’ is intrinsically a public good. More and more often, it is a commodity, and we need to treat its exponents accordingly. Chapter 13 also provides a summary of the arguments presented.

Appendix 1 (which should be read in conjunction with Chap. 4) uses Weber’s typologies of mystics and ascetics to discuss the possible new carriers of alter-neoliberal social change. It argues that ascetics of the Weberian type who instigated capitalism are not here today to control it. One might even wonder, were these sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious people around today, how they would react to Weber’s argument that the fulfilment of their frugal lives actually created a new type of material abundance and new social inequalities ?

Appendix 2 is an excursus from Chap. 8 and discusses Jameson’s statement about the stasis of culture . It uses Thomas Khun’s theories concerning scientific revolutions to explain why popular culture has not been revolutionary for some time.

Episteme of the Book

I am a Weberian sociologist. By this denomination, I make reference to a specific way of understanding the world that takes into account people’s view of how they live. This sociological view takes at face value both people’s agency and also how structures impact on it. In this book, I also touch on other sociological theories and views, such as those of Durkheim, Foucault, Habermas, Jameson, Ritzer, and Beck. These, while not specifically Weberian, are used to inform my position and will be ‘Weberianized’ for my line of argument. My theoretical approach is thus not eclectic. The bias in my approach is not a search for a perfect and ideal society (e.g. Marxist), or for a status quo (e.g. functionalist). I do not know what the perfect society is for everyone. I do know that the current one compares well in some respects to many in the past. My aim is to analyze the present and to suggest minor interventions for the prevention of a particular social decline.

I am also indebted to Weber’s concept of elective affinity. He was able to explain the development of both the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism in early modernity as part of a constellation of causes (See Appendix 1). There was no specific relationship of cause and effect between these two ideologies and they were, instead, in elective affinity. They coexisted and were mutually reinforcing as Western civilization was entering modernity. Later, the spirit of capitalism became routinized and no longer needed the Protestant ethic in order to develop further. Critiques have, of course, been brought to bear against this theory, for example, Barbalet’s (2008) provocative reading of Weber’s personal nationalistic project in developing his argument. However, the main one—which is of interest here—is Weber’s very weak take on the importance of the impact of the printing press on the growth of both these ideologies (Eisenstein 1979). In this book, I analyze religions in late modernity that are in elective affinity with today’s form of capitalism, neoliberalism . One strong aspect of this affinity, as the printing press was in early modernity, is the influence of the digital world. The point of this research is not to find relationships of cause and effect among religion, neoliberalism , and the digital world, but to explore, instead, their elective affinities.

It is not the intention of this book to seek a radical alternative to neoliberalism and to promote a change of system. Many of my colleagues with Marxist leanings will probably, therefore, read me as conservative. As a sociologist, I am seeking difference, yet refrain from calling for grand narratives of social change; of course, changes would and will affect populations both positively and negatively, creating new forms of equalities and inequalities . When I teach first-year sociology students in Australia, I always remind them that even if Marxism has failed, it has certainly improved our lives. If the mode of existence of the petite bourgeoisie in Europe in the nineteenth century were compared with that of the Western upper working class in the twenty-first century, the latter might appear to be living like gods. We have clean running water, toilets inside our houses, hundreds of entertainment channels at the push of a button, and phones to call anyone anywhere in the world. In making this statement, I do, of course, acknowledge that I am an author writing from a privileged position, and that many people in the world do not have access to all these facilities. However, I want to examine some burgeoning inequalities , particularly with regard to the middle class. Peter Hall and Michèle Lamont (2013) confirm that neoliberalism has indeed improved the lives of some individuals, but that it has created many challenges for various groups and communities, including the middle class (see also Pusey 2003).

I was a teenager at the end of the period of Keynesian economics and the beginning of the neoliberal era, but I was nevertheless able to access a free education without accumulating any debt. I am, therefore, one of the individuals who gained from this late phase of Keynesianism. I am one of the first generation of my family to attend university. I also live what I consider to be a comfortable life.

François Dubet (2014) claims that it is now out of fashion to take a critical position with regard to consumer culture: I, as well as the large majority of the Western world, am part of consumerism, and I might be considered hypocritical in critiquing it. This book is not an attack on consumerism. Consumerism has even been factored into our present state of well-being. Indeed, it is quite interesting to note that the Australian Government’s Productivity Commission Research Report (2010) on the not-for-profit sector lists consumption of goods and services as an indicator of well-being, alongside other factors such as sense of self, engagement in meaningful activity, and safety from personal harm. Consumer culture affects us at a basic level and, whether we like the thought or not, is intrinsic to who we are. However, we should not hesitate to be critical when consumerism becomes an end in itself (Lipovetsky and Serroy 2013), rather than a means to whatever can enhance our well-being.

We also cannot ignore that in recent years there has been real global progress in health and education. As Thomas Piketty (2013) explains, we have seen a shift from societies in which people could not expect to live longer than forty years and were analphabetic, to societies in which citizens live longer than eighty years and most have at least minimal access to literate culture. We have witnessed an economic growth which has impacted positively on the conditions of life for most people.

However, as a Weberian sociologist, my concerns in this book are centered on the flaws of neoliberalism , and especially on what Karl Polanyi refers to as the danger of creating a disembedded market detached from social control (Levien and Paret 2012). This detachment produces social dislocations that are no longer kept in check by, for example, a Keynesian system. But bringing back such a system would not necessarily be successful. In today’s globalized world, the nation-state has lost some of its capacity for action. In this global economy, Habermas (2001) claims, Keynesianism within national borders can no longer work. The economy, driven by powerful multinational corporations, escapes the control of regulatory states. This has many consequences, one being the end of a 200-year development of the welfare state.

In a dislocated system, being a ‘hard worker’ is no longer sufficient; people also need to be highly productive and tap into the skills valorized by the market (Hall and Lamont 2013). Not so long ago, having earned a university degree was enough to get a person a decent job. Those with the very top jobs not only possessed the right amount of economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital, but were also ‘savvy’ in working at the top level (unless shored up by familial money or influence). Today, one needs to be ‘savvy’ just to have a decent job.

Inequalities of a new magnitude are on the increase. Marion Maddox (2014) quotes the New York Times concerning the statistic that in 2010 in the United States, 93 percent of all income gains were collected by only 1 percent of the population. Another telling statistic is that just 15,000 households received 37 percent of all these income gains. These figures represented a record for concentration of income gains among a small percentage of the population, and also a record for inequality. Hall and Lamont (2013) point out that we have arrived at a situation of unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Dubet (2014) extrapolates that if such inequalities continue to increase in Europe and in North America, these societies will regress to a level of inequality similar to that of pre-World War I industrial society. Piketty (2013) claims that this has already occurred in the United States, where the concentration of income from 2000 to 2010 was slightly greater than from 1910 to 1920 (1950–1970 being the phase of least inequality). One of the reasons he gives is the gigantic increase in remuneration for the most highly