Suchergebnisse

Introduction: being consumed -- Practicing commodity. Binge religion: social life in extremity ; The spirit in the cubicle: a religious history of the American office -- Revising ritual. Ritualism revived: from scientia ritus to consumer rites ; Purifying America: rites of salvation in the soap campaign -- Imagining celebrity. Sacrificing Britney: celebrity and religion in America ; The celebrification of religion in the age of infotainment -- Valuing family. Religion and the authority in American parenting ; Kardashian nation: work in America's klan ; Rethinking corporate freedom -- Corporation as sect. On the origins of corporate culture ; Do not tamper with the clues: notes on Goldman Sachs -- Conclusion: family matters

What are you drawn to like, to watch, or even to binge? What are you free to consume, and what do you become through consumption? These questions of desire and value, Kathryn Lofton argues, are questions for the study of religion. In eleven essays exploring soap and office cubicles, Britney Spears and the Kardashians, corporate culture and Goldman Sachs, Lofton shows the conceptual levers of religion in thinking about social modes of encounter, use, and longing. Wherever we see people articulate their dreams of and for the world, wherever we see those dreams organized into protocols, images, manuals, and contracts, we glimpse what the word "religion" allows us to describe and understand.

"Today on Oprah," intoned the TV announcer, and all over America viewers tuned in to learn, empathize, and celebrate. In this book, Kathryn Lofton investigates the Oprah phenomenon and finds in Winfrey's empire—Harpo Productions, O Magazine, and her new television network—an uncanny reflection of religion in modern society. Lofton shows that when Oprah liked, needed, or believed something, she offered her audience nothing less than spiritual revolution, reinforced by practices that fuse consumer behavior, celebrity ambition, and religious idiom. In short, Oprah Winfrey is a media messiah for a secular age. Lofton's unique approach also situates the Oprah enterprise culturally, illuminating how Winfrey reflects and continues historical patterns of American religions

"Today on Oprah," intones the TV announcer, and all over America viewers tune in to learn, empathize, and celebrate. In this book, Kathryn Lofton investigates the Oprah phenomenon and finds in Winfrey's empire--Harpo Productions, O Magazine, and her new television network--an uncanny reflection of religion in modern society. Lofton shows that when Oprah likes, needs, or believes something, she offers her audience nothing less than spiritual revolution, reinforced by practices that fuse consumer behavior, celebrity ambition, and religious idiom. In short, Oprah Winfrey is a media messiah for a se

AbstractThis essay observes that a hostile relationship to religion is an elemental component of contemporary debates about gender and sexuality, and this hostility has its origin in a specific movement, freethought. A long line of Anglophone self-described freethinkers argues that human beings embrace religions because they cannot think without direction. TERF voices echo this explanation as they seek to right what they determine are wrong figurations of gender. The freethinker's ritual presentation requires standing at a pulpit determined by their claimed associations with and commitment to reason, and then correcting someone else's view of themselves with a red pen in front of a crowd. Understanding TERFs, and their ability to declare what gender is and is not, requires a foray into the history of religions to perceive why this is such a tenacious prejudicial rite of modernity.