Religion, economics, and aesthetics: On the production of beauty in economics and religion

This dissertation explores the interweaving of religion, economics, and aesthetics. By approaching the discourse on economics and religion through the lens of aesthetics, this dissertation illuminates the power of desire in shaping and sustaining religious and economic systems. Desire forms a deep connection between the fields of economics and religion. The cultivation of desire in religious communities informs how people participate in the economy, including what they buy, make, and how they organize economic relations. Likewise, the cultivation of desire in the economy influences how persons engage religion, including shaping understandings of human being, conceptions of divinity, and how religious communities organize. The cultivation of desire in religion plays a role in the maintenance of systemic economic injustice, but religion can also play a significant role in resisting systemic inequality insofar as it cultivates alternative desires. Religious communities cultivate alternative forms of desire by organizing religious communities in ways that challenge economic structures by giving priority to those not benefiting from the economy in the production and distribution of the sensible.;In the first chapter, I demonstrate a structural relationship between economics and religion grounded in the category of desire. I argue that it is essential to consider aesthetics in relation to economics and religion because aesthetics has the capacity to shape and transform both economic and religious desire. In the second chapter, I explore the function of aesthetics to cultivate desire in free market capitalism and how Christian communities in the United States reinforce the aesthetics of the free market. In particular, I contend that a vision of makeover beauty cultivates the mimetic desire for limitless consumption of the goods produced in the market. This desire for consumption drives the growth of the free market and requires the sacrifice of those unable to keep up in the competition for limitless consumption. Furthermore, I demonstrate that ecclesial communities organize their economic existence in ways that deploy the vision of makeover beauty and cultivate the desire for sacrifice. In the third chapter, I explore the field of theological aesthetics in order to examine how the means of production of theological aesthetics relates to the means of production in the free market. I argue that theological aesthetics grounded in discussions of giving or the gift do not challenge the organization of free market capitalism, while theological aesthetics organized around sites of concentrated economic pressure resist the organization of free market capitalism by giving priority to those not benefiting from the economy in the production and distribution of the sensible. The fourth chapter explores three sites of concentrated economic pressure from which alternative aesthetics that resist the desire for sacrifice are arising. In the final chapter, I explore how the aesthetics of religious communities are reformed by organizing around sites of concentrated economic pressure.