Academic workshop at the British Academy, London - 26th November, 2009

DISTINGUISHING "RELIGIOUS" FROM "ECONOMIC" - Academic workshop at the British Academy, London, 9.45 am ­ 5.15 pm, Thursday 26th November, 2009
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).
Website: http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2009/religious-economic/