Having just finished another book for my second comprehensive exam I'm seeing the theme of religion as pathology emerge. Mara Einstein's 2008 book: "Brands of Faith: Marketing religion in a commercial age", is based on a numerous assumptions, too many to review in great detail, that undermine what is seemingly the main theme of the book: religion has become subject to the same marketing principles as other industries in the neoliberal economic market.
Einstein treats "religion", by which she means Christianity and Judaism, all other faiths are labeled "New Age" (which is problematic enough to inform a rapacious critique), as a means to incite uncomfortable, self-flagellating reorientations of the self. Take, as an example of this thinking, the sentiment that "religion isn't supposed to comfortable, and it is through discomfort that we find new parts of ourselves" (Einstein 2008: 210). While a disciplinary perspective on religion and its affective bio-power smacks of a "Foucault effect", he doesn't ever grace the pages of Einsten's analysis. Instead, the reader must be content with assertions that distract from what could be a meditation on the "commodification of the self" (Einstein 2008: 199 quoting Rindfleish 2005) but what ends up being a rage against the dissolution of religious purity by immigration, economic principles of profiteering, the "self-help" movement, and New Age spirituality; under which flows the assumption that religion is pathological, a social ill, the famous opiate and has been subsumed under the other social ill, an economic logic of fee-for-use services.
While my intention is not to discount these ideas, there is no reflexive mention nor contextualization of the links between religion and the economy, made famous by Weber, but well known regardless cross-disciplinarily. Einstein treats "religious consumers" as dupes, as social agents with no agency, no capacity to comprehend the social and economic maelstrom of religious devotion in an era of neoliberal market reform in (nearly) post-welfare economies.
These are unfinished, incomplete thoughts. More later.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
New in a community near you: a gas-fired peaker-plant!
A new power plant has been proposed by the Ontario government through the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) for northern York Region. Instead of conservation programs, household power monitors, graduated time-of-day power use charges or green energy sources, the OPA has advocated for the construction of new 1960's technology gas-fired peaker-plants. Instead of planning for a near future where non-renewable forms of energy are depleted the OPA has instead decided, in conjunction with surely very powerful energy concerns, to build big concrete polluting plants that will further degrade the quality of our air, climate, and local ecological system.
Public consultations, mandatory opportunities for local residents (the real stakeholders) to air their grievances, have proven that the provincial government, in cahoots with energy developers, have little regard for the ecological future of our area, and are concerned solely with increasing and expanding settlement in farming and agricultural areas which will require new power sources. So misguided is the thinking of the OPA that they claim that little ecological damage will result from new gas-fired plants (check out the OPA website, it's all there: misdirection, private sponsored studies, and environmental assessments that say that air pollution falls around the perimeter of the plant and no further). What happens when a power plant is located in an agricultural, farming area? Who wants to eat the vegetables saturated with low-lying ozone and high levels of toxic chemicals? So much for the organic farms.
The illusion, the veil, of democratic process is wearing thin for those local residents who have formed groups and coalitions to fight the OPA. The always already failing hegemony of democratic ideology is threadbare here: public consultations were only a nod at due process and diligence, meant to keep the local public satisfied. Stakeholder consultations have been a lame attempt to keep up the curtain of democratic accountability. The OPA knows, of course, what the ecological result of these plants will be, just as we do. We know that in the process of 'keeping up appearences' that any rights we thought we had to contest these controversial plans come a very distant second to the power and pressure for expansion from the provincial government aligned with the various buisness sectors that are looking for more area to convert by way of "development". Development discourse is not just a post-colonial tune sung by the IMF and World Bank choir, it is local (however you want to characterize that), poingant and knocking on your back door. How will we answer? Who precisely decides what constitutes "development"?
In repsonse to plans for power plants and increased "development", local groups, composed of residents, in each of the areas where a plant is potentially slated for construction have mobilized and continue to educate, speak out, and protest these plans. Local residents are giving voice to protests for our air, our water, your water, your air, your health, our health. They are giving presence to the understanding that speaking is a political act.
Radical action starts with conversation and debate. Give voice to these veiled threats against your health, your safety, the health, saftey and viability of our agricultural areas. Future generations will call on us to account for our actions now.
Contact our energy minister, George Smitherman Contact the Ontario Power Authority
Public consultations, mandatory opportunities for local residents (the real stakeholders) to air their grievances, have proven that the provincial government, in cahoots with energy developers, have little regard for the ecological future of our area, and are concerned solely with increasing and expanding settlement in farming and agricultural areas which will require new power sources. So misguided is the thinking of the OPA that they claim that little ecological damage will result from new gas-fired plants (check out the OPA website, it's all there: misdirection, private sponsored studies, and environmental assessments that say that air pollution falls around the perimeter of the plant and no further). What happens when a power plant is located in an agricultural, farming area? Who wants to eat the vegetables saturated with low-lying ozone and high levels of toxic chemicals? So much for the organic farms.
The illusion, the veil, of democratic process is wearing thin for those local residents who have formed groups and coalitions to fight the OPA. The always already failing hegemony of democratic ideology is threadbare here: public consultations were only a nod at due process and diligence, meant to keep the local public satisfied. Stakeholder consultations have been a lame attempt to keep up the curtain of democratic accountability. The OPA knows, of course, what the ecological result of these plants will be, just as we do. We know that in the process of 'keeping up appearences' that any rights we thought we had to contest these controversial plans come a very distant second to the power and pressure for expansion from the provincial government aligned with the various buisness sectors that are looking for more area to convert by way of "development". Development discourse is not just a post-colonial tune sung by the IMF and World Bank choir, it is local (however you want to characterize that), poingant and knocking on your back door. How will we answer? Who precisely decides what constitutes "development"?
In repsonse to plans for power plants and increased "development", local groups, composed of residents, in each of the areas where a plant is potentially slated for construction have mobilized and continue to educate, speak out, and protest these plans. Local residents are giving voice to protests for our air, our water, your water, your air, your health, our health. They are giving presence to the understanding that speaking is a political act.
Radical action starts with conversation and debate. Give voice to these veiled threats against your health, your safety, the health, saftey and viability of our agricultural areas. Future generations will call on us to account for our actions now.
Contact our energy minister, George Smitherman Contact the Ontario Power Authority
Friday, December 12, 2008
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