Rites of Repudiation, Ethnographies of Consumption

Beginning in the early 1990s, a sub-genre of punk rock emerged known popularly as Krishnacore. Bands such as Shelter and 108 toured the country promoting Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism to thousands. Keeping with an established theme in punk rock, Krishnacore bands and fans announced their rejection of the consumerism of mainstream American society. However, they also explained their rejection as coming from a theological tradition rooted in the idea that "Kṛṣṇa owns everything." In lyrics and zines (homemade magazines), it was explained how one must go to the roots of the desires that drive capitalist culture in order to create real social change. In this regard, there was widespread talk of a "spiritual revolution" in which the bands and fans of Krishnacore were only one notable participant. This paper will explore the theology of consumption as expressed in Krishnacore and how it expresses the theological perspective of Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism in novel ways.

Since the dawn of the new millennium, the NYC-based but internationally recognized radical performance community, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Church, has occupied, excavated, and politically exploited the discursive space between art activism and religious community in order to advance its sophisticated anti-capitalist critique. Over time, the group has traded in its early parody of the religious character of American capitalism for a mode of “eco-sincerity” and has evolved its anti-consumerism into a broader political ecology. Today, the group centers what they call “Earth Justice” and continue to partner with activist groups and allies around issues of anti-racism, immigration justice, and queer and feminist struggle. Based in six years of in-person and digital fieldwork with the Church of Stop Shopping, this paper analyzes the group’s “post-religious” religious saving of consumer souls, a project that also directly implicates the scholar’s imaginary in a battle for the soul of society.

Focusing on religious identification and interfaith work, what stories become obfuscated by a “fair trade” label? I base my discussion on ethnographic research with Ten Thousand Villages and one of their supplying artisan group, Bunyaad, in Lahore, Pakistan. I explore some of the overlapping but divergent meanings that fair trade may carry for customers and suppliers, with an eye to the challenges of articulating the religious aspects of projects through the standardized label. While supplier groups like Bunyaad do much more than simply prevent coercion in their production chains, their additional projects become difficult to see under “fair trade,” which emphasizes a libertarian perspective on labor economics. From consumer perspective, the label promises ethically neutral transactions, free from exploitation, rather than the ethically good transactions promoted within more insider fair trade communities. Moreover, while more expansive notions of additional good are constrained, religion is entirely excluded by the framing.

This paper draws upon temple-based ritual veneration of Shani, a Hindu planetary deity traditionally associated with misfortune. I argue that Shani temple ritual, while appearing to conform to the abundance-based economy of Hindu temple ritual, actually enacts a ritualization of the neoliberal market manipulations known as hedges. I show that these rituals, while couched in the language of devotional religion, are predicated on commodification, such that the exchange between devotee and the divine becomes a transaction that ensures prosperity. I suggest that the outward-directed flow of Shani temple rituals and his new association with a class of objects understood to ward off the evil eye consequently collapses boundaries between the sacred and the secular such that rituals performed in the temple sacralize class and conceal, but sustain, logics of caste hierarchy. As such, this new temple-focused veneration of Shani raises questions about Weber’s assertions about rationalization and secularization.