Religious Economies and Religious Mobility

Religious economies are a novel idea with potential application in a free market economy. They bring the idea of the existence of the supernatural and concern with ultimate meanings, so ubiquitous to religions, in touch with the multiplicity of paths available to us. In Islamic Sufism, there are as many paths to God as there are individuals. A situation in which people could compare and evaluate religions, regarding them as a matter of choice, can best described as a religious economy. Just as commercial economies consist of a market in which different firms compete, religious economies consist of a market (the aggregate demand for religion) and firms (different religious organizations) seeking to attract and hold clienteles. Just as commercial economies must deal with state regulations, religious economies' key issue is the degree to which they are regulated by the state. From Stark's viewpoint, the natural state of a religious economy is religious pluralism, wherein many religious “firms” exist because of their special appeal to certain segments of the market or the population. However, just as there is incentive for a commercial organization to monopolize the market to maximize its profit, it is always in the interest of any particular religious organization to secure a monopoly, maintain its followers, and expand into new interest groups. This can be achieved, (and even then to a very limited extent) only if the state forcibly excludes competing faiths (Stark, 2001). The building blocks of Stark's ideas are the assumption of a free market, a market economy, and the key issue of rational choice theory, hand in hand with American Pragmatism. As with the history of religions, which are not and have not been free from contest and cooperation, similarities, and differences, so religious economies have not been and are not easily shaped without considering forces from within and among different economies. Religious actions, reactions, and interactions in monotheism, diversity of textual interpretations, the growth of intellectualism or counter-intellectualism, human perception of transcendence and the sacred, as well as the realities of everyday life, all imply that the idea of religious economies needs more exploration. Christianity and Islam, one dominating the West and the other the East and Africa, offer the instances of two massive markets. Each religion has more than a billion adherents and a history of sharing the monotheistic market. Both religions, in spite of Islamophobia in the West, have formed and will participate in the decline, incline, or stability of the market. This subject is timely in light of the political movements in the Middle East and monolithic misconception of Islam.

Author(s):  
Hasan Shahpari ◽  
Tahereh Alavi Hojjat

Religious economies are a novel idea with potential application in a free market economy. They bring the idea of the existence of the supernatural and concern with ultimate meanings, so ubiquitous to religions, in touch with the multiplicity of paths available to us. In Islamic Sufism, there are as many paths to God as there are individuals. A situation in which people could compare and evaluate religions, regarding them as a matter of choice, can best described as a religious economy. Just as commercial economies consist of a market in which different firms compete, religious economies consist of a market (the aggregate demand for religion) and firms (different religious organizations) seeking to attract and hold clienteles. Just as commercial economies must deal with state regulations, religious economies' key issue is the degree to which they are regulated by the state. From Stark's viewpoint, the natural state of a religious economy is religious pluralism, wherein many religious “firms” exist because of their special appeal to certain segments of the market or the population. However, just as there is incentive for a commercial organization to monopolize the market to maximize its profit, it is always in the interest of any particular religious organization to secure a monopoly, maintain its followers, and expand into new interest groups. This can be achieved, (and even then to a very limited extent) only if the state forcibly excludes competing faiths (Stark, 2001). The building blocks of Stark's ideas are the assumption of a free market, a market economy, and the key issue of rational choice theory, hand in hand with American Pragmatism. As with the history of religions, which are not and have not been free from contest and cooperation, similarities, and differences, so religious economies have not been and are not easily shaped without considering forces from within and among different economies. Religious actions, reactions, and interactions in monotheism, diversity of textual interpretations, the growth of intellectualism or counter-intellectualism, human perception of transcendence and the sacred, as well as the realities of everyday life, all imply that the idea of religious economies needs more exploration. Christianity and Islam, one dominating the West and the other the East and Africa, offer the instances of two massive markets. Each religion has more than a billion adherents and a history of sharing the monotheistic market. Both religions, in spite of Islamophobia in the West, have formed and will participate in the decline, incline, or stability of the market. This subject is timely in light of the political movements in the Middle East and monolithic misconception of Islam.


Author(s):  
Eglė Rindzevičiūtė

This epilogue addresses the complex question of the link between system-cybernetic governmentality and the neoliberal transformation of post-Soviet Russia. Although the system-cybernetic governmentality and economic neoliberalism did not share institutional origins, they were linked during the post-Soviet transformation as a result of historical momentum: the members of the Soviet systems approach community were best positioned to conduct the transfer of the models of the market economy from the West at a time when neoliberal ideas on the free market economy were gaining popularity. However, this should not mean that the pre-1980 history of system-cybernetic governmentality should be tainted as neoliberal; rather, this reveals the extent to which scientific governance can be appropriated by different economic and political regimes. If anything, the pre-1980 history of system-cybernetic governmentality is a history of a rather liberal governmental technology, underscoring the conditions of autonomy, self-regulation, and government at a distance.


Wacana Publik ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Syamsul Ma'arif

After had being carried out nationalization and hostility against west countries, the New Order regime made important decision to change Indonesia economic direction from etatism system to free market economy. A set of policies were taken in order private sector could play major role in economic. However, when another economic sectors were reformed substantially, effords to reform the State Owned Enterprises had failed. The State Owned Enterprise, in fact, remained to play dominant role like early years of guided democracy era. Role of the State Owned Enterprises was more and more powerfull). The main problem of reforms finally lied on reality that vested interest of bureaucrats (civil or military) was so large that could’nt been overcome. 


Author(s):  
Nicolai Von Eggers ◽  
Mathias Hein Jessen

Michel Foucault developed his now (in)famous neologism governmentality in the first of the two lectures he devoted to ’a history of governmentality, Security, Territory, Population (1977-78) and The Birth of Biopolitics (1978-79). Foucault developed this notion in order to do a historical investigation of ‘the state’ or ‘the political’ which did not assume the entity of the state but treated it as a way of governing, a way of thinking about governing. Recently, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has taken up Foucault’s notion of governmentality in his writing of a history of power in the West, most notably in The Kingdom and the Glory. It is with inspiration from Agamben’s recent use of Foucault that Foucault’s approach to writing the history of the state (as a history of governmental practices and the reflection hereof) is revisited. Foucault (and Agamben) thus offer another way of writing the history of the state and of the political, which focuses on different texts and on reading more familiar texts in a new light, thereby offering a new and notably different view on the emergence of the modern state and politics.


Author(s):  
محمد خليفة حسن

يعرض البحث جهود إسماعيل الفاروقي في مجال تاريخ الأديان؛ وإسهامه في التأسيس المنهجي لهذا العلم على المستوى الدولي وعلى مستوى المنهج والمضمون. درس الفاروقي طبيعة التجربة الدينية في الإسلام، وعلاقتها بالتجارب الأخرى. وانخرط في الدرس الديني الحديث في الغرب، ومناهج فهم الدين ودراسته. وأبرز البحث دور الفاروقي في تطوير نظام من المبادئ الماوراء دينية؛ والمصدر الإلهي للأديان والحاجة إلى الدراسة النقدية للتراث الديني، أملاً في تعاون البشر في إقامة دين الفطرة، الذي يُوحِّد كل الأديان. This paper presents the efforts of Ismail al-Faruqi in the field of history of religions and his contributions in the methodological establishment of this field on the international level, particularly in the areas of methodology and content. Al-Faruqi studied the nature of the religious experience in Islam, and its relationship with other experiences.  He engaged in the modern religious studies in the West, and the methods of understanding and studying religion. The paper highlights Al-Faruqi's role in developing a system of Meta-Religious principles, the divine source of religions, and the need for critical assessment of religious heritage, in the hope that human beings would cooperate to establish the religion of Fitra (natural disposition), which unites all religions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (19) ◽  
pp. 185-188
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Zavaliy

The modern history of Ukraine shows that the nation seeks to advance on the European path and meet the level of civilization development of the West. In this state of affairs, one can not ignore the rights of citizens, which are a state-building principle for European communities, namely, the primordial rights and freedoms of its citizens. The European face of Ukraine is formed from many components, including the importance of religious relations in the state, within which the freedom of citizens in general is determined. In 2015, Pope Francis recalled that religious freedom is "a fundamental right that forms the way by which we interact socially and personally with people who are around us, whose religious views may differ from ours."


Author(s):  
Orlando Woods

This paper reframes the theory of religious economy by developing an understanding of the effects of transnational religious influence on religious marketplaces. In doing so, it highlights the need to rethink the role of regulation in shaping the ways in which religious marketplaces operate. By reinterpreting regulation as the ability of the state to control the extent to which religious groups are able to access resources, it argues that transnational religious networks can enable access to extraneous resources, which, in turn, can enable religious groups to subvert the regulatory prescriptions of the state. Transnational religious influences therefore highlight the porosity of religious economies and the problem of regulating religious marketplaces. Qualitative data are used to demonstrate how Singapore-based churches create and strengthen transnational religious networks with their counterparts in China. These networks enable religious groups to operate with a degree of independence and to overcome regulatory restrictions on (and other limitations to) religious praxis.


2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S Landes

In the history of technological development, why didn't other regions keep up with Europe? This is an important question, as one learns almost as much from failure as from success. The one civilization that was in a position to match and even anticipate the European achievement was China. China had two chances: first, to generate a continuing, self-sustaining process of scientific and technological advance on the basis of its indigenous traditions and achievements; and second, to learn from European science and technology once the foreign “barbarians” entered the Chinese domain in the sixteenth century. China failed both times. What explains the first failure? I stress the role of the market: the fact that enterprise was free in Europe while China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights; that in Europe innovation worked and paid, while the Chinese state was always stepping in to interfere with private enterprise. As for the second failure, China's cultural triumphalism combined with petty downward tyranny made it a singularly bad learner.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 198-211
Author(s):  
Bohdan YAKYMOVYCH

Assessing the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–1921, and the proclaiming of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic (ZUNR) as the second most crucial phenomenon in the history of the Ukrainian people after the establishment of the Cossack State under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi in the 18th century, the author of this study pays special attention to the mistakes of the political and army leadership of the Galicians, which caused the demise of the state in the Galicia-Bukovyna-Zakarpattia region. The author identifies three periods, during which it was possible to send the Polish occupiers away from the territory of the Eastern Galicia. It was the wasted time, disorientation in the Polish domestic contradictions, disarrangement of the rear, failure to enforce the Act of Unification of the ZUNR, and the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR), as well as the developments in the Dnieper region, caused the demise of the ZUNR. The latter found itself face to face with the might of the revived Polish state already in the second quarter of 1919. Just at that time, the Entente, with a neutral position of the United States, supplied the Poles with considerable forces and means throwing the Ukrainians at the paws of Poland, Romania, and White and Red Russia. Keywords West Ukrainian People’s Republic (ZUNR), Lviv, Peremyshl (Przemysl), Dmytro Vitovskyi, Hnat Stefaniv, Mykhailo Omelianovych-Pavlenko


Author(s):  
Aušra Navickienė ◽  
Alma Braziūnienė ◽  
Rima Cicėnienė ◽  
Domas Kaunas ◽  
Remigijus Misiūnas ◽  
...  

The history of publishing in Lithuania begins with the early formation of the Lithuanian state in the 13th century. As the state was taking shape over many centuries, its name, government, and territory kept changing along with its culture and the prevailing language of writing and printing. Geographically spread across Central and Eastern Europe, the state was multinational, its multilayered culture shaped by the synthesis of the Latin and Greek civilizations. Furthermore, the state was multiconfessional: both Latin and Orthodox Christianity were evolving in its territory. These historical circumstances led to the emergence of a unique book culture at the end of the manuscript book period (the late 15th and the early 16th century). In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), writing centers were formed that later frequently became printing houses; books were written in Latin, Church Slavonic, and Ruthenian, with two writing systems (Latin and Cyrillic) coexisting, and their texts and artistic design reflected the interaction of Western and Eastern Christianity in the GDL. During the period of the printed book, the GDL, though remote from the most important Western European publishing centers, was affected by the general tendencies of the Renaissance, Reformation, Baroque, and Enlightenment culture through the Roman Catholic Church and integration processes. During the 16th–18th centuries, publications in Latin, Ruthenian, and Polish prevailed in the GDL. In the 16th–17th centuries, about half of the press production were Latin books that spread along with Renaissance ideas and the Europeanization of the state, while the Ruthenian written language (one of the official state languages) was developed. After the Union of Lublin was signed in 1569, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth promoted the integration processes in public life, manifested by the emergence of the Polish language and the spread of Polish books as well as the growth of publishing in the 18th century. In the 16th century, several Lithuanian writers emerged in Prussian Lithuania (or Lithuania Minor), the region of the Prussian state populated by Lithuanians. A unique tradition of writing and publishing had flourished there until the start of World War II. In 1795, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth disappeared from the map of Europe and a larger part of the GDL lands was annexed to the Russian Empire. However, Vilnius, a seat of old printing and book culture traditions, managed to survive as an important publishing center of the eastern periphery of Central Europe, and as a city fostering publishing in the Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish languages. In the early 19th century, the main forces of authors, publishers, book producers, and distributors of Lithuanian books began to concentrate in Lithuania. In 1918, after the restoration of an independent state of Lithuania, new conditions arose to benefit the development of book publishing. The Lithuanian tradition of publishing, owing to a renewed printing industry and the expansion of a publishing house and bookstore network, significantly strengthened. Between 1940 and 1990, the country suffered a half-century occupation (the occupation of the Nazi Germans in 1941–1945; the rest was the Soviet occupation) during which the Jewish national minority was destroyed, the Poles were evicted from the Vilnius region, the Germans were expelled from the Klaipėda region, and Sovietization and Russification were enforced in the sphere of civic thought. In Soviet Lithuania, although all the publishing houses belonged to the state and were ideologically controlled, a core of publishing professionals emerged who, after Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, readily joined the publishing industry developing under free market conditions.


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