Presenting an overview of an emerging field in the study of contemporary religion, this book explores religion as both shaped by consumer culture and as shaping consumer culture. Following an introduction which critically analyses studies on consumer culture and integrates scholarship in the sociology of religion, this book explores religion, neoliberalism and consumer society. Claiming that we have entered a new phase that implies more than the recasting of state-religion relations, the authors examine how religious changes are historically anchored in modernity but affected by the commoditization, mediatization, neoliberalization and globalization of society and social life.

Contents: Preface, FranÃ
ois Gauthier and Tuomas Martikainen; Introduction: consumerism as the ethos of consumer society, FranÃ
ois Gauthier, Linda Woodhead and Tuomas Martikainen; Part I Changing World Religions: Religion, individualisation and consumerism: constructions of religiosity in 'liquid' and 'reflexive' modernity, Simon Speck; From standardised offer to consumer adaptation: challenges to the Church of Sweden's identity, Per Pettersson; Packaging religious experience, selling modular religion: explaining the emergence and expansion of megachurches, Stephen Ellingson; The paradoxes of new monasticism in the consumer society, Stefania Palmisano; 'Find your inner God and breathe': Buddhism, pop culture, and contemporary metamorphoses in American Judaism, Mira Niculescu; Shopping for a Church? Choice and commitment in religious behaviour, Francesca E.S. Montemaggi. Part II Commoditised Spiritualities: Entangled modernity and commodified religion: alternative spirituality and the 'new middle class', Andrew Dawson; The enchantments of consumer capitalism: beyond belief at the Burning Man festival, FranÃ
ois Gauthier; Buddha for sale! The commoditisation of Tibetan Buddhism in Scotland, John S. McKenzie; Mutual interests? Neoliberalism and New Age during the 1980s, Lars Ahlin; Healing or dealing? Neospiritual therapies and coaching as individual meaning and social discipline in late modern Swedish society, Anne-Christine Hornborg; Valuing spirituality: commodification, consumption and community in Glastonbury, Marion Bowman; Bibliography; Index.