Religion and the Morality of the Market

Description

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there has been a widespread affirmation of economic ideologies that conceive the market as an autonomous sphere of human practice, holding that market principles should be applied to human action at large. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the ascendance of market reason has been countered by calls for reforms of financial markets and for the consideration of moral values in economic practice. This book intervenes in these debates by showing how neoliberal market practices engender new forms of religiosity, and how religiosity shapes economic actions. It reveals how religious movements and organizations have reacted to the increasing prominence of market reason in unpredictable, and sometimes counterintuitive, ways. Using a range of examples from different countries and religious traditions, the book illustrates the myriad ways in which religious and market moralities are closely imbricated in diverse global contexts.

Filippo Osella is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Sussex. He has conducted research in Kerala, south India, since 1989 and published two joint monographs, one on issues of stratification, identity and social mobility amongst an 'ex-untouchable' community and another on masculinities. Based on fieldwork in Kerala and a number of Gulf countries, his more recent research has examined contemporary transformations of south Indian Muslims communities resulting from economic liberalization and the popularization of Islamic reformism. Recently he has concluded a research project on Muslim practices of charity and philanthropy in Sri Lanka. Daromir Rudnyckyj is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. His research addresses globalization, religion, development, Islam, and the state in Southeast Asia, focusing on Indonesia and Malaysia. His current research examines the globalization of Islamic finance and analyzes efforts to make Kuala Lumpur the 'New York of the Muslim World' by transforming it into the central node in a transnational Islamic financial system. His book Spiritual Economies: Islam, Globalization, and the Afterlife of Development (2010), was awarded a Sharon Stephens Prize from the American Ethnological Society. His research has been supported by the American Council for Learned Societies, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and other scholarly foundations.