This book addresses the growing academic concerns of the market-religion convergences in Asia. Bringing together a group of leading scholars from Asia, Europe, Australia and North America, it discusses multiple issues regarding religious commodifications and their consequences across Asia’s diverse religious traditions. Covering key issues in the anthropology and sociology of contemporary Asian religion, it draws theoretical implications for the study of religions in the light of the shift of religious institutions from traditional religious beliefs to material prosperity. The fact that religions compete with each other in a ‘market of faiths’ is also at the core of the analysis. The contributions show how ordinary people and religious institutions in Asia adjusted to, and negotiated with, the penetrative forces of a global market economy into the region’s changing religio-cultural landscapes. An excellent contribution to the growing demands of ethnographically and theoretically updated interpretations of Asian religions, Religious Commodifications in Asia will be of interest to scholars of Asian religion and new religious movements.
Author(s): Patta Kitiarsa
Edition: 1
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 288
BOOK COVER......Page 1
TITLE......Page 4
COPYRIGHT......Page 5
CONTENTS......Page 6
FIGURES......Page 8
CONTRIBUTORS......Page 10
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 14
INTRODUCTION: Asia’s commodified sacred canopies......Page 16
Part I: A COMMODITY APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF ASIAN RELIGIONS......Page 28
1 ASIA AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMIES OF CHARISMA......Page 30
2 NEW SPIRITUALITIES, THE MEDIA AND GLOBAL RELIGION......Page 46
Part II: MODES AND TECHNIQUES OF THE SYMBOLIC ECONOMIES......Page 62
3 COMMODIFYING BLESSINGS: Celebrating the double-yang festival in Penang, Malaysia and Wudang mountain, China......Page 64
4 KUAN TO: The vegetarian festival in a peripheral southern Thai shrine......Page 83
5 MATERIALIZING MERIT: The symbolic economy of religious monuments and tourist-pilgrimage in contemporary Thailand......Page 104
6 BUDDHA PHANIT: Thailand’s prosperity religion and its commodifying tactics......Page 135
Part III: THE MULTIPLE EFFECTS OF RELIGIOUS COMMODIFICATIONS......Page 160
7 SPIRITS OF CONSUMPTION AND THE CAPITALIST ETHIC IN VIETNAM......Page 162
8 ‘MERCHANDIZING’ HINDUISM: Commodities, markets and possibilities for enchantment......Page 184
9 MCDONALDIZATION AND THE MEGACHURCHES: A case study of City Harvest Church, Singapore......Page 201
10 ISLAM AS A SYMBOLIC COMMODITY: Transmitting and consuming Islam through public sermons in Indonesia......Page 220
11 COMMODIFICATION OF RELIGION AND THE ‘RELIGIFICATION’ OF COMMODITIES: Youth culture and religious identity......Page 235
BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 250
INDEX......Page 276
