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Paper short abstract:

The paper shows that the religious and the economic are inextricably intertwined in alternative spirituality, both in terms of everyday practical life and in terms of ritual and cosmology, that is, the particular practices and doctrine that are tied together by a commonly shared discourse of energy.

Paper long abstract:

In our mainstream society, the economic dimension of alternative spirituality (which is sometimes still called "New Age") has been regarded as controversial since it contradicts our historical-cultural assumption that the sacred is not negotiable. However, a growing number of studies show that contemporary alternative spirituality, as a product of late modernity, was born within the capitalist market economy, and although it explicitly opposes the market in some respects, it is fully adapted to it. It sees no contradiction between spirituality and money, between personal growth and economic prosperity. A key concept here is that of a universal, impersonal, globally flowing "energy" as the essence of the world that encompasses money and coherently connects both realms.

Based on my ethnographic research on Amerindian-oriented alternative spirituality in the Czech Republic, I examine this topic by presenting some examples of events, seminars and workshops organized within the Czech alternative spiritual milieu, in which visiting indigenous people from Latin America actively participate. I focus on the economic side of these activities, the way in which the financial resources are treated and conceived of, and in which they shape the social relations between those involved. The aim is to show that the religious and the economic are inextricably intertwined in alternative spirituality, both in terms of everyday practical life and in terms of ritual and cosmology, that is, in the particular practices and doctrine that are tied together by a commonly shared discourse of energy.

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The notion of Esoteric Economies refers to the informal economy surrounding esoteric practices and the exchanges occurring within these ritual and religious settings. Often socially stigmatized, esoteric economies may seem at the margins of societies while being culturally at their center.

Paper long abstract:

The term Esoteric Economies refers to the informal economy surrounding esoteric practices as well as the esoteric nature of the exchanges that occur within these ritual and religious settings. The social stigma frequently attached to esoteric practices means that they also are associated with morally suspect pursuits and marginalized populations. At the same time, esoteric economies create significant networks through which material and non-material items flow and social relationships are established.

However, when the economy is understood only in terms of institutionalized transactions and commodity exchanges, esoteric economies remain invisible and unrecognized. Nevertheless, they are significant to their participants and to the more dominant economic order. A significant example of this is when esoteric exchanges provide access to globalized networks through which migrants seek work in the formal economy, enabling them to participate in economic exchanges on a global scale through migration and remittances .

Drawing on two case studies from Brazil and Senegal, we will illustrate the significance of esoteric economies that often seem at the margins of society while being culturally at their center.

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Lebanon has been experiencing one of the worst worldwide economic crises since WW2, and Sulṭān Yaʿqūb is a small rural Sunni countryside village. How can villagers survive it? This contribution considers the multilayered encounters featuring a religious-moral idiom that elucidates this question.

Paper long abstract:

Lebanon has been experiencing one of the worst worldwide economic crises since WW2, and Sulṭān Yaʿqūb is a small rural Sunni countryside village. How can villagers survive it? This contribution considers transnational multilayered encounters that elucidate this question.

Sulṭān is close the Lebanese-Syrian border and a significant part of the residents has strong transnational ties to Brazil. Narratives of the success of the village when compared to the rest of Lebanon tend to emphasize the Will of God and Islamic praxis. Entrepreneurship, while central to the experience of the Sulṭānese within Lebanon, Brazil or elsewhere, is only seen as the indirect cause of success, which in turn depends on moral capital. Both financial and moral capital translate into active roles in the village’s institutions, which in turn translates into sociopolitical power in the village and beyond. Overall, the village is characterized by complex and multilayered encounters between people, community, and moral conceptions of the self, significantly expressed in moral economies, with religious, economic, political, and sociocultural undertones, and staged especially in Lebanon, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and North America. These encounters are framed by the Sulṭānese through a religious nexus ubiquitous to daily life, accounting for the “success” of the moral community and represented in patterns of sociopolitical organization. While unique, Sulṭān’s case is also an iteration of a larger structure. It illustrates a pattern that occurs throughout Lebanon, accounting for much of its social dynamics.

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Paper short abstract:

Training a spotlight on women who married priests and their households – two essential yet overlooked components of Orthodox churches – from the perspective of economic anthropology can pave the way for a new approach to religious organizations of this type.

Paper long abstract:

A large body of literature within anthropology and the social sciences has demonstrated that female productive, domestic and reproductive labour has played a pivotal role for the rise and development of capitalism (e.g. Meillassoux 1980; Goddard 2000; Yanagisako 2002; Federici 2004, among many others). Taking inspiration from this research, this paper addresses the households of Orthodox priests belonging to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as a specific form of a collective labour arrangement shaped by organizational constraints established by the Church, the encompassing economic and political conditions, and the imposed or chosen prescription of gender roles. In the Bulgarian and other Orthodox churches, marriage is a prerequisite for ordination; a viable household is a key condition for the existence of parish clergy. The paper argues that training a spotlight on women who married priests and their households – two essential yet overlooked components of Orthodox churches – from the perspective of economic anthropology can pave the way for a new approach to religious organizations of this type. A focus on priests’ wives and households allows to grasp the structural and ideological implications of evolving economic and political regimes for the resilience and transformation of Orthodox churches in a novel way.

Ethnographic fieldwork conducted since early 2023 in Sofia and Sofia region, Bulgaria, allows to distinguish between two general models of entangled domestic and church organization, determined by shifts in the occupational trajectories of priests’ wives, respectively, under late state-socialism, and after the regime change in 1989 to the present day.

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Learning from the intra-theological polysemy of hudood, an Islamic theological term saturated into everyday speech that describes the social location of divine boundaries, this paper calls for a new consideration of the morality of thresholds within economies of religious expertise.

Paper long abstract:

In Pakistani Punjab, Twelver Shi’i zakirs [orators] offer highly emotive access to the presence and virtues of divinely guided figures from Islamic history. Critics see the increasingly extravagant gatherings where they orate as a waste of money that could be spent on the welfare of the community. Other critics cite the social media celebrity of some zakirs as evidence that they cross an undefined threshold between humble service and professionalism, particularly in relation to the issue of financial remuneration. For the term threshold, their critics use hadd, or hudood in plural, a theological term saturated into everyday speech that describes the social location of divine boundaries.

Shi’i belief and practice in Pakistan continually underlines the importance of dwelling upon rather than crossing thresholds. The first Shiʿi Imam, Ali is reported to have scorned those who “exceed the lawful limits of love” for him. Anthropological theory is of little use here, where a threshold describes both a frontier and the magnitude of intensity that looms at its boundary, conflating the description of a limit with an act of delimitation. This paper argues that thresholds should be reconsidered in light of the Islamic theological principle of hudood, and its use as a speculative critique of the kinds of religious media and performance that Pakistani zakirs exemplify. Learning from the intra-theological polysemy of hudood, and the different knowledge that they mediate within an economy of religious expertise, this paper calls for a new consideration of the morality of thresholds.

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This paper explores how Swaminarayan Hindu youth working in London’s financial districts reconcile practicing the religious ethic of detachment from worldly aspirations while aspiring for economic mobility. What kinds of ethical work help them navigate tensions and entanglements?

Paper long abstract:

Scholarship on Hindu economic ethics began with Max Weber (1958) and Karl Kapp (1963), both of whom used the philosophy of select Hindu texts as evidence that economic betterment was not a primary concern within the broad spectrum of traditions known as Hinduism. Economists such as Raj Krishna (1978) further interpreted this as evidence for the slow economic growth of postcolonial India, coining the term “Hindu Rate of Growth.” Contemporary scholars acknowledge the meanings ascribed to aspects of modern economic life, such as the pursuit of wealth, which are tied to moral behaviour and exemplified by the personification of wealth in Hinduism (Gregory 2018).

This paper goes beyond the previous streams of scholarship by introducing an ethnographic scene that challenges the oft-repeated binary of absolute engagement and absolute detachment. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Swaminarayan Hindu youth working in London’s financial districts (Canary Wharf, The Square Mile, and Lombard Street), we demonstrate how Swaminarayan Hindu youth, often first or second-generation immigrants, contend with personal and familial aspirations of economic mobility in a competitive capitalist market economy while adhering to a religious ethic of detachment.

We argue that, through creative methods such as cognitive reframing, engaging in dialogue with peers, and fostering social networks at work, Swaminarayan Hindu youth can visualise the temporal nature of their economic aspirations and grapple with their agency within a competitive capitalist market economy. However, these processes often give rise to irresolvable tensions that necessitate a fundamental shift in how they ontologically view the economy.

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United Nations agencies are experimenting with blockchain tech for aid payments. This paper examines how refugee women in Jordan evaluate these experiments. Drawing on the Islamic concept al-baraka, women define value beyond mere spending power, and beyond the promises of techno-cratic finance.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how refugee women in Jordan's Al-Za'atari and Al-Azraq camps evaluated a United Nations aid experiment with blockchain technology. The Islamic concept baraka - similar to Christian grace, Malagasy hasina, or Polynesian mana - was consistently used to critique the 'quality of the quantity' (Ross et al 2020): how technological change depleted the sense of durability and bounty around aid payments. With its material and temporal dimensions, the evaluative lens 'mish [not] baraka' signifies women's collective struggle to define value beyond mere spending power, and beyond the promises of digital financialisation. As blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and other 'web3' technologies are promoted for the financial inclusion of the world's most marginalised groups, this ethnographic research reveals how they are contested in the moral vernaculars of real people living precariously, on the poverty line, with severely restricted political, economic, and mobility rights.

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The paper traces the trajectory of a successful church app company from Brazil and reflects on the synergistic relationship between media convergence and economic theology among contemporary evangelical digital entrepreneurs.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic and social isolation measures have accelerated the seemingly irreversible process of 'deep digitalization' (Hepp 2019), initiated with Internet 2.0. This transformation has impacted religious publics, institutions, networks, and practices. Apps have emerged as a primary driver of 'digital religion,' catering to adherents across diverse religious traditions, offering services and functionalities at individual and collective levels. Among the numerous Brazilian startups dedicated to this market is inChurch, currently serving over 30,000 institutions in Brazil and Latin America, the majority of which are evangelical. Founded by two charismatic Christians, the startup places emphasis on hiring individuals who share a common faith.

This presentation is based on interviews with inChurch's founding partners and company employees, online meetings with clients, analysis of written and audiovisual materials available online, and direct experience with the app. I explore how inChurch's long-term project of digitalizing the Church has unfolded through various stages of media convergence, blurring the boundaries between Christianity and the secular market, piety and profit, virtue and value. I demonstrate how these ethical tensions are resolved by inChurch leaders through a reclaiming of the notion of ministry, a key historical category in Christian economic theology. I show how the mystery of ministry (Agamben) reconciles apparently incommensurable moral imperatives and historical forces, such as instrumental rationality and eschatological conviction.