DISTINGUISHING "RELIGIOUS" FROM "ECONOMIC"

Academic workshop at the British Academy, London

9.45 am ­ 5.15 pm
Thursday 26th November, 2009

Register at http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2009/religious-economic/

Academic convenor: Trevor Stack ([log in to unmask])

Sponsored by            CINEFOGO Network of Excellence
                                  Centre for 
Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law, University of Aberdeen

Administered by British Academy events staff ([log in to unmask])

How does “religious” get distinguished from 
“economic” in historical and contemporary 
contexts, and to what effect? The distinction is 
far from obvious. It could be argued, for 
example, that capital itself is a "god": an 
invisible, transcendental entity signified by the 
Bull, whose workings are mysterious, bringing 
prosperity but also famine, and sustained by 
collective acts of faith and a sacrificial cult 
at its heart. However, economists, businesses, 
workers, consumers, politicians and lawyers all 
continually distinguish “economic” issues from 
“religious” ones (just as from other spheres such 
as “politics” and “civil society”). How and why 
do they do that, and with what consequences? It 
was proposed in a previous conference, for 
example, that the category of “religion” 
understood as other-worldly faith has served 
historically to set in relief the “secular” 
rationality of individual self-interest, 
commodity exchange and capital accumulation. 
“Religion” is often expected to be charitable, 
concerned with building credit in heaven, 
shunning this-worldly economic gain, and if it is 
felt to seek its own economic gain then it is 
considered a perversion (and sometimes 
repressed). But different people make different 
religious-economic distinctions in different 
contexts and to different effects. The panel will 
examine a range of contexts in which “economics” 
gets marked off from “religion” (including in the 
history of the discipline of Economics).

Please register for the workshop at 
http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2009/religious-economic/

The workshop is to prepare for the 
Religious-Economics panel of a major conference 
on 14-16 January, also at the British Academy. 
Sign up to http://religioussecular.ning.com to 
receive information about the January conference.

Please forward this email to anyone who you think might be interested!

Trevor Stack