The enchantments of Mammon: how capitalism became the religion of modernity

"Far from displacing religions, as has been supposed, capitalism became one, with money as its deity. Eugene McCarraher reveals how Mammon ensnared us and how we can find a more humane, sacramental way of being in the world. If socialists and Wall Street bankers can agree on anything, it is the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: McCarraher, Eugene (Author)
Format: Print Book
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2019
In:Year: 2019
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Capitalism / Religion / History
RelBib Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
CH Christianity and Society
TJ Modern history
TK Recent history
Further subjects:B Capitalism Religious aspects History
B Economics Religious aspects History
B Romanticism
Online Access: Table of Contents
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Summary:"Far from displacing religions, as has been supposed, capitalism became one, with money as its deity. Eugene McCarraher reveals how Mammon ensnared us and how we can find a more humane, sacramental way of being in the world. If socialists and Wall Street bankers can agree on anything, it is the extreme rationalism of capital. At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the "disenchantment" of the world, stripping material objects and social relationships of their mystery and sacredness. Ignoring the motive force of the spirit, capitalism rejects the awe-inspiring divine for the economics of supply and demand. The author challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether or not it is acknowledged. Capitalist enchantment first flowered in the fields and factories of England and was brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit. Later, the corporation was mystically animated with human personhood, to preside over the Fordist endeavor to build a heavenly city of mechanized production and communion. By the twenty-first century, capitalism has become thoroughly enchanted by the neoliberal deification of "the market." Informed by cultural history and theology as well as economics, management theory, and marketing, The Enchantments of Mammon looks to nineteenth-century Romantics for salvation. The Romantic imagination favors craft, the commons, and sensitivity to natural wonder. It promotes labor that, for the sake of the person, combines reason, creativity, and mutual aid. McCarraher makes the case that capitalism has hijacked and redirected our intrinsic longing for divinity--and urges us to break its hold on our souls"--
Item Description:Literaturangaben
ISBN:0674984617