Shape-Shifting Capital: Spiritual Management, Critical Theory, and the Ethnographic Project

by George J. Gonzalez

Shape-Shifting Capital: Spiritual Management, Critical Theory, and the Ethnographic Project is positioned at the intersection of anthropology, critical theory, and philosophy of religion. First, González explores the phenomena of “workplace spirituality” in a language that is accessible to a general readership. Taking contemporary trends in organizational management as a case study, he argues, by way of a detailed ethnographic study of practitioners of workplace spirituality, that the conceptual and institutional boundaries between religion, science, and capitalism are being redrawn by theologized management appropriations of tropes borrowed from creativity theory and quantum mechanics. Second, González makes a case for a critical anthropology of religion that combines existential concerns for biography and intentionality with poststructuralist concerns for power, arguing that the ways in which the personalization of metaphor bridges personal and social histories also helps bring about broader epistemic shifts in society. Finally, in a postsecular age in which capitalism itself is explicitly and confidently “spiritual,” González suggests that it is imperative to reorient our critical energies towards a present day evaluation of postmodern capitalism’s boundary-blurring. González further argues that the kind of “existential deconstruction” performed by what he calls “existential archeology” can serve the needs of any social criticism of neoliberal “religion” and corporate spirituality.

428 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2015

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

One possible critique of capitalism or institutional life: It's mechanical, hierarchical, soulless. González (a personal friend) listens closely to capitalism's own self-narration and finds a different story. Neoliberal capitalism understands itself as organic, intuitive, and spirit-filled. Progressive leaders, especially in churches, who have resourced themselves with metaphors from quantum physics and chaos theory are actually drawing on the same wells.

That's one facet, perhaps the most crucial, in a very complex argument. It's brilliant, it absolutely moves the study of religion forward in exciting new ways, and I'm not sure I can summarize most of it for purposes beyond the disciplines in the subtitle. Readers of Max Gladstone intrigued by the social theory implicit in the Craft might want to look at this for a challenge.