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Tag Archives: market

Austerity and the Language of Sacrifice

15 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by Dr Brian W Nail in Critical Religion, University of Luxembourg

≈ Comments Off on Austerity and the Language of Sacrifice

Tags

austerity, Critical Religion, economics, global, market, sacrifice, unemployment

Journalists frequently invoke the language of sacrifice when describing the consequences of the austerity measures currently being implemented in Britain and across much of Europe. Similarly, politicians have long recognized the rhetorical force of the word ‘sacrifice’, but they often find more subtle ways of embedding the language of sacrifice within speeches by fusing their rhetoric with sacred symbols and ideals which derive their power from longstanding notions of national identity. Thus national symbols that have traditionally garnered powerful sentiments of loyalty to the state are rhetorically translated into an implied sense of fidelity to the prevailing political ideology of the present. In his recent speech at the opening of Parliament, David Cameron made a quick transition from acknowledging fallen British soldiers who “have made the ultimate sacrifice” while fighting in Afghanistan to applauding the government for cutting the national deficit by a third. The implication seems to be that, like the good soldiers who died for their country, British citizens must also be willing to make great sacrifices in order to secure the economic future of their nation. By juxtaposing the deaths of British soldiers with the supposed success of his economic policies, Cameron unwittingly reveals the extent to which the sacrificial rhetoric of austerity is invariably associated with very real human costs. In terms of the UK government’s current policies, these costs are directly linked to an erosion of socio-economic rights in Britain.

The erosion of socio-economic rights that is currently underway is perhaps difficult to detect in the political discourse of austerity because its rationale is framed within the language of economic recovery. In recent speeches, Cameron has continually referred to the need for Britain to regain its competitiveness in the global marketplace. Improving Britain’s competitiveness means making it into the sort of place where corporations and investment firms want to do business. Two of the most direct ways of accomplishing this aim are cutting corporate tax rates and creating what is often referred to as a ‘more flexible labour market.’ Although economists may suggest that there are complex theoretical and mathematical contingencies underlying these institutional policies, the sacrificial logic of these two issues is not difficult to ascertain. Within the so-called developed economies of the West, corporations do not equate to the job producing powerhouses of manufacturing that once drove the industrial economy. The most profitable industries are banking and finance, and thus corporate tax breaks equate to lightening the tax burdens for the very institutions that played a significant part in bringing about the financial crisis in the first place.

Creating ‘a more flexible labour market’ is essentially economic jargon for reducing the employment protection legislation which ensures that employees are treated fairly and paid appropriately. A recent report from the OECD suggests that changes to employment protection legislation which make it easier for employers to terminate jobs should be accompanied by the development of public policies such as job-search assistance programmes and unemployment benefits that help to minimize the social impact of unemployment. A combination of public spending cuts and loosening of employment protection legislation has contributed to even greater economic uncertainty for many workers in Britain. If the current government’s policies are implemented, Britain will be according to one perspective a better place to do business, but it will be a rotten place to work.

As it stands, the conflict between society’s commitment to social welfare and the maintenance of the financial services industry is at the forefront of political debates in Britain and across the globe. And although it seems that these debates are more fierce than ever, from the earliest times the pursuit of money has had a polarizing effect upon society not simply because it goes hand-in-hand with the attainment of social status, but perhaps most importantly because the accumulation of wealth is also a means of securing political power. In his pseudo-historical novel Picture This, Joseph Heller explores the inherent antagonism that exists between the culture of speculative investment and the pursuit of the public good. In Heller’s own vitriolic fashion, the novel’s narrator describes the sociological and cultural consequences of the invention of money:

With the invention of money by the Lydians in the seventh century before Christ the possibility of profit spread, and as soon as there was profit, there were people who wanted to make it, more than they wanted to make anything else. And whenever there is more money to be made from money than from anything else, the energies of the state are likely to be devoted increasingly to the production of money, for which there is no community need, to the exclusion of those commodities that are required for health and well-being, and contemplation. . . . There will be many who flourish in this environment of finance, and a great many more who can go straight to hell (1989, 55–56).

Contrary to the fundamental doctrine of economic liberalism which maintains that in the free market everyone is a winner, Heller’s narrative highlights the ways in which the pursuit of monetary wealth within a society has a tendency to draw the energies of the state away from matters of social well-being and redirect its political energy towards the maintenance of financial institutions. The speculative activities that pervade the ‘environment of finance’ result not only in a highly unstable economic basis for society, but the inevitable costs associated with these activities, in the end, come at the expense of public funds formerly dedicated to the welfare of the state. Thus, according to Heller’s account, the ‘environment of finance’ that is made possible through the invention of money is not only presented as a risky basis upon which to build a nation’s economy, but most importantly, such speculative activity  has a deleterious effect upon the socio-economic rights that are essential to a civil society.

The literary critic Ian Gregson suggests that a pervasive theme in Heller’s work is the “impact of institutions on what is conventionally taken to be ‘the individual’—how thoroughly the supposed autonomy of that individual is compromised by far larger political and cultural forces”(2008, 31). In Picture This, the narrator’s suggestion that those who do not flourish in a world dominated by the uncertainties of the environment of finance “can go straight to hell” could be considered more than merely a crass turn of phrase. In reality, those who end up the casualties of market forces not only suffer financially, but they also suffer a loss of political and social agency in a culture where wealth has become a measure of personhood. Falling off the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder is tantamount to a descent into hell. Meanwhile the financial institutions and administrative overseers who facilitated these exchanges have only been subject to legal action in a handful of extreme cases. Their redemption, it seems, is predicated upon the fact of their irreplaceability—the environment of finance assumes the status of a self-perpetuating system that constantly seeks to transform every loss into a gain by shifting the sacrificial costs of its own existence onto a substratum of society to whom it bears no binding moral obligations.

Since the beginning of the credit crisis in 2008, austerity measures targeted at reducing public spending and supposedly stimulating economic growth have resulted in a substantial erosion of socio-economic rights in Britain and throughout the European Union. In his 1974 study of Third World socio-economic development and political ethics, Peter Berger claims that “The history of mankind is a history of pain” (1974, 163). And he describes the principles that guide politicians in the development of economic policy as a “calculus of pain.” Decisions that often result in actual physical and psychological trauma are considered “in terms of costs and benefits, of input and output.” According to Berger, “Such analysis is typically very technical, and generally borrows concepts and techniques from economics, even where non-economic phenomena are involved” (1974, 164). Most importantly, he points out the rather obvious but nonetheless crucial fact that underlying the economic data on unemployment and income distribution there is the reality of human suffering and death.

In a recent study of the impact of austerity on public health inequalities, researchers concluded that “the burden of budget cuts is falling most greatly on disabled, low-income and unemployed persons”(Reeves et al. 2013). Focusing primarily on already economically depressed parts of the United Kingdom, the study reports a substantial increase in suicide rates which correlates with increased rates of unemployment particularly among public sector workers. It also predicts that changes to disability allowances and housing benefits will have a detrimental effect upon individuals who are already among the most economically deprived in Britain. Consequently, the study concludes that “austerity policies can be expected to impact health in several ways, each difficult to reverse or avoid in the absence of strong social safety nets” (Reeves et al. 2013, 4). These findings point to the real costs underlying the sacrificial rhetoric of austerity. The socio-economic rights which have arguably served to define Britain as a civil society are currently under threat, but it remains to be seen whether or not the nation will seek a viable alternative to the risky sacrificial games that must be played in the ‘environment of finance.’ Reflecting upon the internecine conflicts that plagued Western Europe in the 16th century, the narrator of Picture This notes that “If they were fighting over money, Aristotle could have told them that it was not worth the struggle” (Heller 1989, 186). If money alone is not worth the struggle, then perhaps it is time to ask Aristotle what is.

Works Cited:

Berger, Peter L. 1974. Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Gregson, Ian. 2008. “Joseph Heller’s Allegories of Money.” In Character and Satire in Post War Fiction, 31–53. London: Continuum.

Heller, Joseph. 1989. Picture This. London: Pan Books; Picador.

Reeves, Aaron, Sanjay Basu, Martin McKee, Michael Marmot, and David Stuckler. 2013. “Austere or Not? UK Coalition Government Budgets and Health Inequalities.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (September 11)

Marian apparitions – a challenge to established categories

02 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by Melanie Barbato in Critical Religion, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Christian, Critical Religion, market, modernity, pilgrimage, religion, strong religion

Emile Zola noted in 1892 about the newly built Lourdes basilica that its effect was “very shimmering but not especially religious”. The aesthetics of the Lourdes complex, with its mix of architectural styles and generous use of electric lights, was only one of many elements of the Marian apparitions that did not sit well with critics. Interestingly it was not only the reactionary politics behind the Marian cult but particularly the modern aspects like the consumerism or use of mass media at Marian apparition sites that were criticized by many liberal and progressive observers as unworthy of a true religious spirit.

But it would be misguided to simply continue the 19th century tradition and label these aspects as aberrations of an otherwise pure religiosity. As Suzanne K. Kaufman has shown, republicans used the controversy around Lourdes to construct a dichotomy between an acceptable private, nostalgic religiosity and its debased modern public forms in order to “relegate its practices to the margins of modern political and economic life”. (80)

The background for this was that the developments at Lourdes and other Marian apparition sites challenged the monopoly of the secular world view for presenting viable visions for modernity and progress. Marian apparitions showed that reactionary values could go very well with modern technology, mass media and the market. The apparitions themselves were also highly political, not only in the sense that they brought existing tensions to the fore as in the case of violent clashes between Catholics and state troops following claims of Marian apparitions during the German Kulturkampf, but innately through the messages conveyed by the seers to the people.

Academia is increasingly taking “strong religion” (Almond et al. 2003) into account, yet the preconceptions about what the term is supposed to designate are strongly influenced by militant Islamism and its scripture based forms of fundamentalism that dominate the news since 9/11. Marian apparitions, however, are not primarily rooted in scripture but distinctively modern. Mary, the mother of God, appears in the here and now with a message tailored to the circumstances of the time, often choosing places undergoing drastic transformation: Fatima called for a bulwark against communism, La Salette summoned to a disciplined Christian life on the brink of the 1848 revolution. The still on-going messages at Medjugorje that started a decade before the Balkan war spread the message of peace as did the apparition of Mary in Kibeho, where one of the major genocides of the Rwandan war took place.

At Lourdes, the Assumptionists realized the political potential of the Marian apparition site when they chose the National Pilgrimage as their key instrument for driving forth their mission of re-Christianizing French society from individual to government. Also, what is overlooked when speaking in derogatory terms about the devotional kitsch associated with Marian apparition shrines is that these mass produced items could powerfully forge and express identity as they served as “a rival set of emblems” (Blackbourn, 1993: 27) to the omnipresent national symbols of allegiance like the Tricolour.

Of course, the status of Marian apparitions is highly contested. Catholics are not obliged to believe in any of the accepted apparitions, and not only rationalists may find it difficult to believe that God sends Mary today to speak on day-to-day politics. Yet one should keep in mind that those who write off Marian apparitions as degenerated forms of religion and hence as imagined have an agenda, too. Religion, politics, modernity and the market do not come in neat boxes, and we should be wary of anyone trying to package these terms according to their needs. Marian apparitions are an underestimated phenomenon of modernity that can shed new light on the contested conceptualisation and construction of religion from the 19th century onwards.

—

Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World, by Gabriel A. Almond, R. Scott Appleby and Emmanuel Sivan. University of Chicago Press, 2003

Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany, by David Blackbourn. Alfred A. Knopf, 1994

Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine, by Suzanne K. Kaufman. Cornell University Press, 2005

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