982829

Course
Markets and Governance in a Post-secular Society: an Introduction to Economic Theology

Faculty
Mitchell Dean, Professor of Public Governance, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, CBS

Stefan Schwarzkopf, Associate Professor, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, CBS

Mads Peter Karlsen, Post-doc Scholar, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, CBS

Hans Joas, Emeritus Professor, Humboldt University, Berlin

Course Coordinator
Mitchell Dean and Stefan Schwarzkopf

Prerequisites
Only PhD students can participate in the course.

The course requires the submission of a short paper that deals with conceptual problems or analytical designs in relation to the social study of economy and religion or economic or political theology. Furthermore, papers that apply the concepts of a range of classical (e.g., Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Marcel Mauss, Ernst Troeltsch, Karl Polanyi, Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Bataille) and more contemporary theorists (e.g., Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Charles Taylor, Robert Bellah, Hans Joas, Jürgen Habermas, John Milbank, Marcel Henaff) to empirical problems in a variety of domains are welcomed. The paper can come from or be located across any discipline(s) in the social sciences or humanities, economics and management. The paper should state the theme and the analytical strategy of the PhD project and it should be approximately 5 pages. In the paper, the PhD student should state his/her main analytical challenge/concern at his/her current stage in the project.

Papers must be in English. DEADLINE is October 22, 2018.

It is a precondition for receiving the course diploma that the student attends the whole course.

Aim
The course aims to provide the participants with:

• An introduction to key analytical frameworks and concepts in the contemporary social study of the relationship between religion, politics and economy

• An overview of the emerging paradigm of economic theology within the humanities and social sciences

• Introduction to pragmatist perspectives on religion and society

• Key examples of how those frameworks and concepts can be used to understand contemporary social and economic practices including management, finance, marketing and consumer culture, and various forms of economic organization

Course content
The shift from government to economic governance since the 1980s, and the associated marketization of socio-economic relationships that make up society, has often been linked to a specific kind of neoliberal faith in markets. While this focus on markets as superior allocation mechanism has been criticized as a form of (secular-political) ideology, there is a growing suspicion that Western Christianity might have played a role in the almost unchallenged optimism that surround market-based forms of economic governance.

Classical thinkers in historical-economic sociology and economic anthropology realized early on that religious faith and economic markets made powerful bedfellows. Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Ernst Troeltsch, Karl Polanyi, R. H. Tawney, Marcel Mauss, to name a few, worked with an inclusive understanding of the role of religion in the making of modern capitalism. Famously, Marx and his followers, like Walter Benjamin, suspected that the bourgeoisie had turned the economy itself into a quasi-religion – called ‘capitalism’ – driven by the commodity fetish and the spectre of capital. Weber in turn identified a particular religiosity at the origins of capitalist modes of production and accumulation, namely the anxiety about ‘the world’ that characterized Reformed Protestantism. Weber’s contemporary Werner Sombart took this genealogical enquiry much further into Biblical times and the origins of Judaism. Up until the 1950s or so, many social theorists, economic anthropologists, economic historians and even economists (Hayek among them) readily accepted that the religious sphere and the sphere of economic decision-making were interrelated and thus needed to be studied together. With the rise of Cold War modernization theories and related secularization theorems, this economic-theological nexus became separated, and it was not before the 1980s that so-called ‘post-secular’ social theorists like Foucault, Agamben, Derrida, Taylor, Bellah, Joas, Habermas, Milbank, Henaff, Bryan S. Turner and Peter L. Berger took to the stage again. Some have identified the so-called ‘post-secular turn’ or ‘theological turn’ in social theory as a new development, that is, a new acceptance of the reality and potency of religious attitudes in social life, combined with a rejection of normative theories of secularization.

In terms of economic sociology and economic anthropology, one can also argue that the ‘return of religion’ allows us to revisit nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century classical scholars and ask in which ways their conceptualization of the sacred-profane dichotomy might provide new insights into contemporary capitalism and its myriad of new ways of economic organizing, including the ‘share-economy’, the ‘new commons’, ‘invisible’ trading through algorithms, and the ‘liturgical power’ of the new media. With the identification of the paradigm of economic theology, major advances have become possible in our concepts of power and the genealogy of government and economy.

This course provides students with a set of conceptual and analytic tools that will allow them to look at their own study projects in new ways, for example by revisiting key aspects of their research design in terms of the sacred/profane dichotomy, through the lens of the category of the transcendent, or in terms of a more generalized genealogy of governmentality and power. This course does not claim that all economic and managerial activities are necessarily also ‘religious’ in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, the key aim of the course is to expose finance and economics, and management and organization studies, to a genealogical enquiry that takes the essentially theological origins of many of our contemporary concepts and practices seriously. Along the way, students will learn to what extent, for example, the famed ‘spirit’ of capitalism still relates the economic realm to the sacred, and to what extent essential concepts and figures like money, debt, the entrepreneur, the consumer, and the manager are, in part, components of a theological genealogy of the economy.

Teaching style
The course will use lectures given by specialists in the field, which will then facilitate roundtable discussions and dialogue between all members of the course. All students and faculty will be encouraged to give feedback on each other’s presentation of papers.

Lecture plan
Time/Period Faculty Title
Tuesday 6 November

Introduction to

Economic Theology

Session I

9.30-11.00		 Stefan Schwarzkopf Post-secular turn and the Economy: is there a Theo-politics of Markets and Capitalism?
11.00-11.30 Break

Session II

11.30-13.00		 Mitchell Dean Giorgio Agamben and Economic Theology
13.00-14.30 Lunch
14.30-16.30 Hans Joas Public Seminar: The Power of the Sacred: An Alternative to the Narrative of Disenchantment
Wednesday 7 November

Capitalism, Neoliberalism and the Sacred

Session III

10.00-12.00		 Hans Joas Sacralization and Desacralization
12.00-13.00 Lunch

Session IV

13.00-14.30		 Mads Peter Karlsen Debt, Guilt and Forgiveness in late Capitalism

14.30-15.00

 Break

15.00-17.00

 Mitchell Dean and Stefan Schwarzkopf Discussion of papers from PhD scholars

17.30-

 Workshop Dinner

Thursday 8 November

Case studies in

Economic Theology

Session V

9.30-11.00

Stefan Schwarzkopf

 Sovereignty in the Market: the cases of Neuromarketing and Global Finance

Session VI

11.00-12.30

Mitchell Dean

 Political Acclamation and Social Media

12.30-13.30

Lunch

13.30-15.30

Mitchell Dean and Stefan Schwarzkopf

 Discussion of Papers from PhD scholars

15.30-16.30

Conclusion and

Evaluation

 Mitchell Dean and Stefan Schwarzkopf

Learning objectives
To understand and be able to discuss key tenets of economic liberalism (classical and neoliberalism)

To understand the history of the semantic field of economy and its impact on contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism

To gain an overview of the post-secular turn in social and political thought

To understand the emerging field of economic theology

To grasp empirical studies that operationalize theological concepts in order to discuss economics, business and organization

To therefore apply and use concepts of economic theology

Exam
N/A

Other

Start date
06/11/2018

End date
08/11/2018

Level
PhD

ECTS
3

Language
English

Course Literature
Session I

Nelson, R.H. (2004) ‘What is economic theology?’, Princeton Seminary Bulletin (New series) 25 (1): 58-79.

Milbank, J. and Pabst, A. (2015), ‘The meta-crisis of secular capitalism’, International Review of Economics 62: 197-212

Tracey, P. (2012) ‘Religion and Organization: a critical Review of current Trends and future Directions’, The Academy of Management Annals, 6(1): 87-134

Dyck, B. and Wiebe, E. (2012) ‘Salvation, Theology and Organizational Practices across the Centuries’, Organization, 19(3): 299-324.

Session II

Agamben, G. (2011) The Kingdom and the Glory: for a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, Preface, pages 1-51, Appendices.

Dean, M. (2012) 2012) ‘Governmentality meets Theology: “The King Reigns, but he does Govern”’, Theory, Culture and Society 29 (3): 145-158

Session III

Joas, Hans (2016) ‘Sacralization and desacralization: political domination and religious interpretation’, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 36(2): 25-42.

Session IV

Benjamin, W. (2005) ‘Capitalism as religion’ in Religion as Critique: the Frankfurt School’s Critique of Religion (ed. E. Mendieta). New York: Routledge, pp. 259-62.

Nietzsche, F. (1989) ‘Guilt, bad consciousness and the like’ in On the Genealogy of Morals. Vintage Books: New York, pp. 57-95.

Tanner, K. (2004) ‘Economies of Grace’, In: Schweiker, W. and Mathewes, W. (Eds), Having: Property and Possession in Religious and Social Life. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, pp. 354-382.

Session V

Schwarzkopf, S. (2011) 'The political theology of consumer sovereignty: towards an ontology of consumer society', Theory, Culture & Society 28 (3): 106-129.

Zelizer, V. (2011) ‘Human values and the market: the case of life insurance and death in nineteenth-century America’, In: V. Zelizer, Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 19-39.

Session VI

Dean, M. (2017) ‘Three forms of democratic political acclamation’, Telos, Summer, 179: 9-32.

Suggested General Readings

Demerath, N. J. et al. (Eds.) (1998) Sacred Companies: Organizational Aspects of Religion and Religious Aspects of Organizations. New York: Oxford University Press.

Durkheim, É. (1912/2001) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Foucault, M. (2007) Security, Territory, Population. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Heron, N. (2018). Liturgical Power: Between Economic and Political Theology. New York: Fordham University Press.

Hill, L. (2001) ‘The hidden theology of Adam Smith’, European Journal of the History of Economy Thought 8 (1): 1-29.

Leshem, D. (2016) The Origins of Neoliberalism: Modelling the Economy from Jesus to Foucault. New York: Columbia University Press, chapters 1, 2 and 6.

Mondzain, Marie-Jose (2005) Image, Icon, Economy: The Byzantine Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary. Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp 18-66.

Oslington, P. (ed.) (2014) The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rüstow, A. (1942) ‘Appendix: general sociological causes of the economic distintegration and possibilities of reconstruction’, in W. Röpke, International Economic Disintegration. London: William Hodge, pp. 267-83.

Schmitt, C. (2005) Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Stievermann, J., Goff, P., and Junker, D. (Eds.) (2015) Religion and the Marketplace in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tawney, R. H. (1926) Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

Weber, M. (1985) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Unwin.

Fee
DKK 3,900 (covers the course, coffee/tea, lunch and one dinner)

Minimum number of participants
15

Maximum number of participants
25

Location
Copenhagen Business School
Porcelænshaven 24A 
2000 Frederiksberg
Room: 2.68

Contact information
The PhD Support
Katja Høeg Tingleff
Tel.: +45 38 15 28 39
E-mail: kht.research@cbs.dk

Registration deadline
25/09/2018

Please note that your registration is binding after the registration deadline.

In case we receive more registrations for the course than we have places, the registrations will be prioritized in the following order: Students from Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies (OMS), students from other CBS PhD schools, students from other institutions than CBS.
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