The Marketization of Religion: Field, Capital, and Consumer Identity

JAMES H. McALEXANDERBETH LEAVENWORTH DuFAULT

DIANE M. MARTINJOHN W. SCHOUTEN

Institutional Pillars of Identity

Certain institutions traditionally have had broad socializing influence over their members, providing templates for identity that comprehend all aspects of life from the existential and moral to the mundanely material.

Marketization and detraditionalization undermine that socializing role.

Marketization & Detraditionalization

... every individual is charged with the task of constructing his or her personal identity. Traditions no longer automatically steer this construction process ...

Boeve (2005)

Research Question

How do consumers manage identity reconstruction in the fragmented space that remains when a former institutional pillar of identity no longer carries the legitimacy and authority it once had to structure their lives and self-understandings?

Research Methods: Context

Research Methods: Data Collection

• Participant observation• In-depth, unstructured interviews• Archival and online sources

Research Methods: Hermeneutics

• Pre-understanding• Dialogic community• Hermeneutic circle• Constitutive and regulative

Mormon Habitus & Cultural Capital

Worthiness: Symbolic Capital

Consumption prohibitions: • coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, vapes, pre-martial sex,

gay sex, birth control, adult movies (graphic violence okay, nudity not okay)....

Consumption virtues:• modest clothing, church participation, tithing, church

media, missionary service, food storage systems, temple marriage....

Marketization

Detraditionalization

Post-Mormon Identity: Collapse and Reconstruction

I am tearing in half … I’ve lost my core, and I have nothing to replace it with right now

It feels like the death of a baby ... like a spiritual tornado

It’s been fourteen years of my hanging on by a thread, and I am tired

Stickiness of Social Capital

[Her] mother clammed up entirely. She did not speak to me for a year ... But her father just would not shut up. He was loud. He was talking about losing our eternal salvation.

I’m not just neutral [to them]. I’m dangerous.

Experimenting with New Identities and New Moralities

I think it was kind of a testing of the waters, or seeing how it felt (first coffee )

It was like coming out (strapless dress)

I just want to be somebody who’s just a natural, normal part of the world (first alcohol)

Ideology influences consumption, but the reverse is also true. Consumption influences ideology.

Reflexive experimentation and the eventual embodiment of new (and formerly taboo) consumption behaviors can help people develop new moralities of consumption.

Ideology Consumption

Accruing Capital in Alternative Fields

GROUPS

Mature Discussions135 members

LGBTQ exmos92 members

Agnostics/Ignostics40 members

Totally Atheist152 members

and others ...

Alcohol for Beginners

A group to offer helpful drink tips to those of us first venturing into alcohol after leaving Mormonism. Tips on easy to drink beers, wines, mixers and more.

virgin drinking stories ...

Leaving: Not as Easy as It Sounds

Questions?