Why Scholars of Religion Must Investigate the Corporate Form

Abstract

A growing body of research describes connections between religion and economic activity through the language of commodification and marketization. Although this scholarship rightly challenges the assumption that religion is or should be divorced from worldly concerns, it still relies on distinctions between religion and the economy as isolable, reified entities. Rejecting this binary approach as untenable, we argue that studying the corporate form enriches the academic study of religion by providing concrete examples of how people create institutions and how organizations turn human bodies into resources while also fostering individuals’ devotion to collective agendas. Attention to the corporate form enables us to keep money and power in view as we trace historical formations and current manifestations of religious organizations. We investigate Japanese genealogies of the corporate form to elucidate some generalizable principles for how nonprofit religions and for-profit companies alike generate missions, families, individuals, and publics.

Introduction: The Imperial Russian Corporation in and beyond Economic History

“…In their 2020 manifesto, "Why Scholars of Religion Must Investigate the Corporate Form," Levi McLaughlin et al argued that attention to the corporate form offers a particularly useful path by which scholars of religion can leave behind the "ands" (for example, religion and capitalism, Old Believers and economic activity) that artificially divide religion from other forms of life in ways that assume, incorrectly, that religion is a discrete sphere of experience or action. 46 In different ways in different times and places-but, in their view, with special intensity in recent times-the corporate form has long been thoroughly interlaced with the religious, especially in the making of collective life. "The corporate form," they suggested, "shapes collective entities that are variably and simultaneously religious, corporate, familial, public, profiteering, and virtuous."…”

“…"The corporate form," they suggested, "shapes collective entities that are variably and simultaneously religious, corporate, familial, public, profiteering, and virtuous." 47 In line with other recent analytical approaches to the corporation, they eschew narrow definitions or criteria for identifying the corporate form, instead drawing attention to the ways corporations are "plural, internally multiple, enacted, and contingent": plural, in that there is no transnational, transhistorical, or necessary definition of the corporate form; internally multiple, in that many visions and versions of a corporation often clash even within a single corporation; enacted, in that they are everyday matters, made and remade through discourse and practice; and contingent, in that the corporate form does not just mimic or emerge necessarily from a larger configuration (such as "capitalism"). 48 Along none of these axes do modern Western forms of corporate life serve as good analytical models for the rest of the world.…”

Environmentalism

“…As Duncan Williams has observed, 'much of mainstream Buddhism [is] aligned politically with the right-wing political conservatives and big business ' (2012: 384). Similarly, Shinto is a corporate religion, which is highly dependent upon sponsorship from business enterprises (Rots 2017b: 132; see also McLaughlin et al 2020). Priests are generally interested in preserving shrine and temple grounds, but most of them are reluctant to engage in protests that challenge the socio-political status quo.…”

Corporate Hinduism: An argument for attention to sites of authority in a nascent field of research1

“…have rightly argued that scholars of religion must pay attention to the corporate form such that entities as diverse as Panasonic and the Catholic Church come within the same purview. They rightly argue that doing so “permits examination of how individual and collective aspirations, conceptions of transcendence, value inculcation, and labor may coalesce as religion, corporation, family, or another collectivity” (McLaughlin et al., 2020, p. 6) 5 . As hard distinctions between religion and the corporation (or here, the business school) collapse, scholarship that characterizes religion as being “commodified” (Carrette & King, 2005 and Aravamudan, 2006) or subject to a “ corporate‐led takeover” (Carrette & King, 2005, p. 128 [emphasis in original]) begin to appear inadequate.…”

“…5 5 As McLaughlin and his co‐authors argue, corporate forms are always “internally multiple” and “contingent” (2020, pp. 7–9).…”