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Let me tell you about my latest article, co-authored w/ @mclaughlin_levi, Aike Rots, and Chika Watanabe. It’s called “Why Scholars of Religion Must Investigate the Corporate Form.” https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfaa041. 1/
For decades now it’s been common to hear scholars refer to the “religious marketplace,” applying rational choice theory to religious affiliation and rendering belief and belonging as outcomes of savvy marketing and discerning consumer choice. 2/
This functionalist approach renders religion as a universal human need. It treats clerics as service providers and laypeople as seekers who “shop around” for the religion that fits their needs. 3/
(In studies of Japanese religions, such analyses have often been tied to the “spirituality” lit of the early 2000s. See I. Gaitinidis on some problems with this influential literature and a recent backlash to the “spirituality” concept: 10.14746/sijp.2019.60/61.3) 4/
Some scholars have also problematized what they see as the “commodification” or “marketization” of religion. They decry how pristine religious content has been adulterated by market forces. 5/
Literature in this vein is vast. Carrette & King’s /Selling Spirituality/ is one early example. There’s also this special issue: https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2018.1482616. 6/
There has also been an efflorescence of work on religion and capitalism, including the AAR Buddhism & Economics seminar, work by, e.g., Katie Lofton and Amanda Porterfield, and recent roundtables in JAAR: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfz049. 7/
This work is super valuable because it helps us see how seemingly “religious” stuff can be put to seemingly “nonreligious” purposes. But my colleagues and I kept feeling mild discomfort at the framing religion AND capitalism. The bifurcation seemed off to us. 8/
We also thought that -ization words were doing a lot of unexamined work. What, exactly, does it mean to “marketize”? (After the deserved critiques of secularization theory, we all must be on guard against teleological just-so stories about macrosocial change over time.) 9/
So we decided to look at corporations. Specifically, we decided to look at the “corporate form.” We wanted to describe how collective activities and social formations can provide a new angle on relationships between money, power, and non-empirical aims and claims. 10/
We met for an initial retreat in Oslo, which was lovely. And we started outlining and writing. 11/
We wanted to not only problematize the religion AND x approach, but also to disrupt the Euroamerican-centric approach to religion and capitalism. 12/
If in Europe the corporate form emerged out of a particular sort of religious* intentional community, in Japan the corporate form preceded the category of religion. 13/
This alternate trajectory for how corporations and religions are related doesn’t just tell us something interesting about Japan. It suggests something really interesting about religion. 14/
The point I want to stress here is that we theorize FROM Japan rather than applying Eurocentric theories TO Japan. We draw on some concrete examples from Japanese “religions” and “corporations” to make our points. 15/
Along the way, we address the shareholder vs. stakeholder debate, the relationship between fungible human bodies and immortal institutions, the "public good” concept, management, the pervasiveness of familial metaphors, and the persuasiveness of corporate mission statements. 16/
We ultimately defined the corporate form as PLURAL, INTERNALLY MULTIPLE, ENACTED, and CONTINGENT. 17/
We also stressed that the corporate form is CONCRETE. It involves real estate, human bodies, and movable property as well as abstract things like management philosophies and credos.18/
In the Hobby Lobby case, for example, the legal fiction that corporations are people carried the day. And it is important that corporations ARE people in this legal sense. But corporations also MAKE people. The Japanese word for this is hitozukuri 人作り. 19/
(On corporations making people as workers, see @isaacweiner27’s great article, “The Corporately Produced Conscience”: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfw049.) 20/
(Corporations also make consumers. See @popapologist’s work on goop: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfw091.) 21/
Of course, people also make corporations. Their labor, self-abnegation, and commitment are necessary for the corporate form to flourish. But corporate needs often supersede the needs of the people who make up corporations. 22/
Corporations require management. They also have to protect investments. Sometimes religions adopt corporate strategies to protect things like intellectual property. See @andrewvent’s work: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfw084. 23/
These are just a few examples of how our work builds on great work in the field of religion AND capitalism while also using the notion of the corporate form to productively push beyond that dualistic framing. 24/
TL;DR Please read our article! https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfaa041 25/
PS: Personally, I always thought I would only write solo pieces. I’m happy to say my mind was utterly changed by the experience of working with these great colleagues. I also want to stress that this piece was truly co-authored, with equal contributions from all of us. /end
