56 min listen
Craig Martin, “Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie” (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Craig Martin, “Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie” (Bloomsbury, 2014)
ratings:
Length:
63 minutes
Released:
Aug 4, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Whether you need help being more focused at work, are having a spiritual crisis, or want to understand how you can change your inner self for the better, the popular self-help and spiritual well-being market has got you covered. In Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie (Bloomsbury, 2014), Craig Martin, Associate Professor of Religious Studies St. Thomas Aquinas College, examines the rhetoric of individualism at root in these works and popular conceptions of ‘spirituality’ or individual religion. He demonstrates that individual religion has been placed within sets of dichotomies, communal vs. individual, tradition vs. choice, organized religion vs. spirituality, that establish the continuing conversations about contemporary spirituality. Overall, he argues that many spirituality and related self-help discourses recommend quietism, consumerism, and worker productivity, which reproduce the status quo within neoliberal capitalism. In our conversation we discuss the relationship between individuals and communities, the role of human agency, experience, ideology, contemporary fiction, Durkheim, William James, Karl Marx, Louis Althusser, and the joys of reading Deepak Chopra.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Aug 4, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Jodi A. Byrd, “The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011): In a world of painfully narrow academic monographs, rare is the work that teams with ideas, engagements, and interventions across a wide terrain of social life. In The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism (University of Minnesota Pres... by New Books in Critical Theory