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Inhalt:
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Using Protestantism and Islam as examples, the intricate relation between consumerism and religion is examined. Beyond the opposition of religious ‘heroic’ anti-consumerism and secular ‘romantic’ consumerism, it will be argued, there is mutual accommodation and even convergence. On the one hand consumerism challenges religion by taking over some genuinely religious functions; on the other hand it exacerbates and accelerates a religious dynamics of probation and, thereby, invites religion to a specifically consumerist revival. The condition for such a revival, however, is that friend/enemy distinctions based on religion are transformed into a variant of the decidedly unheroic ‘war of shopping’. Religious commitment is assimilated to consumer preferences, and becomes reversible. |
