George Sanders

“Late” Capital: Amusement and Contradiction in the Contemporary Funeral Industry

The contemporary funeral industry exists in a restive, unsettled state within late capitalism. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnography, I discuss recent crises that have revealed apparent cultural contradictions in the funeral industry. The funeral industry mediates and transforms these inherent contradictions as evidenced by the meanings made available to the consumer (via consumables). I argue that many of these constructed meanings are at odds with one another while still permitting consumers to occupy multiple positions simultaneously. This is accomplished in part due to the incorporation of amusement along multiple levels of the funerary apparatus, from the institutional logic of the industry, to the enacted bereavement rituals of participants. Amusement, then, works to resolve, bracket, and perpetuate contradictions.

HELP FOR THE SOUL

This paper attempts to collapse the oft-reified demarcation between economistic ideologies and personal programs for self-improvement. In doing so, one can see the symbiotic relationship that exists between what are ostensibly distinct and separate social arenas. I argue that the porosity between discourses of self-improvement, religion, and capitalist expansion is achieved largely through techniques of ‘pastoral power’. Foucault conceptualized pastoral power to represent the circulation of productive micro-power among individuals. Pastoral power is especially effective in a neoliberal era marked by the retrenchment of the state apparatus in securing the good and welfare of the citizenry and the emphasis on the individual to secure her own happiness and wellbeing. By examining one specific case, the popular and influential Purpose-Driven Life program, one can see pastoral techniques at work: the valorization of highly individualistic subjects who are desirous of novelty and fulfillment; the tutelage of the good and charitable shepherd who is concerned with the salvation of each individual member of the flock; and the situational context that situates all of them.

The Emerging Church as Corporatization’s Line of Flight

ABSTRACT In the United States and elsewhere, many religious organizations have adopted structures, mechanisms, and ideologies that can be understood through the concept of corporatization. More than a process, corporatization creates a schema through which social relationships are structured and particular values and beliefs are emphasized (particularly, the valorization of the consumer). The authors of the present article draw on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s conceptualization of ‘lines of flight’ to illustrate how the Emerging Church, a new religious movement, has leveraged the discontinuities within corporatization. The participants of this movement do so in order to resist institutionalizing systems that rigidify and indoctrinate participants. The authors use ethnographic field methods to demonstrate how Emerging Church participants rely on the tropes of ‘messiness’ and ‘conversation’ to embrace a radical contingency, to foster dialogue, and to avoid adopting rigid, rationalized systems of meaning.

Branding in the American funeral industry

This article explores the ways in which interpassivity, as conceptualized in the work of Robert Pfaller and Slavoj Žižek, can contribute to understanding the role of brands in today’s commodity form. Interpassivity, like interactivity, implies an active relationship between an actor and an external entity. Interpassivity, however, suggests that the actor is active in order to take on a passive role. As it is used here, it refers to a condition in which a consumer actively delegates her or his emotional expressions to a brand. The integration of brands in funerals is appealing given the abject nature of deathcare, the affective intensity of dealing with loss, and the increasingly rationalized role of the funeral industry in deathcare. Based on a multi-sited ethnography, the author discusses the ways in which brandscapes are becoming more widespread in funeral products and services and are even contributing to ‘themed’ funerals and funeral settings. The author argues that these developments are conducive to conditions of interpassivity and they further the ongoing colonization of capital into human emotion.

A Collective Effort to Improve Sociology Students’ Writing Skills

Nationwide, academic sociologists at all types of higher education institutions face the challenge of working to improve students’ writing skills. In this article, we describe a collective effort by a group of faculty members in one undergraduate sociology program to implement several effective writing-improvement strategies. We advocate aiming to improve students’ writing by working together on a united front rather than working in isolation. After explaining the origins of the collective emphasis on writing that emerged in our group and briefly outlining the writing-improvement strategies that we utilize, we use student survey data to reflect on major themes before concluding with a discussion of the merits of our collective approach.

Panem et circenses: Worship and the spectacle

Worship services are increasingly relying on a combination of products, services and technologies that result in the creation of what the late theorist, Guy Debord, referred to as the ‘spectacle’. The spectacle, according to Debord, is unique to contemporary society, in that it reproduces an economic ideology that relies on consumer desire and an expectation for unabated pleasure, amusement or emotional gratification. Not merely a lavish visual display that inspires feelings of transcendence or awe, the spectacle is a culturally and historically specific apparatus that is made possible through the integration of technologies, producers, a normative set of beliefs and values and consumer bodies. Because the spectacle operates ultimately on a visceral, affective level, the valorisation of experiential forms of consumption is reinforced. This paper outlines a theory of the spectacle as it is increasingly articulated in worship services. The spectacle is most salient within seeker-sensitive churches and those that are designed to appeal to the modern consumer (typically by drawing on corporate models). The underlying argument within this paper is that the spectacle is one of late capitalisms most recent incursions into the spiritual lifeworlds of consumers and thereby illustrates that the boundary between the sacred and the secular is one that represents reification.

Beyond the Field Trip: Teaching Tourism through Tours.

A course in the sociology of tourism offers an opportunity to examine a world-transforming force that is penetrating more and more aspects of social life. It also offers an opportunity to create a learning environment that uses the object of study as the medium of study. This article examines how instructors can use tourism to teach the sociology of tourism, and thereby help students develop an understanding of the subject matter through reflexive examination of classroom practice. Drawing on research in the sociology of tourism, it outlines a conceptual framework for thinking about tourism as a spatial practice that includes semiotic, interpersonal and cultural dimensions. Through examples, it shows how these dimensions can be synthesized into a pedagogical strategy that uses field trips and classroom learning to teach the sociology of tourism. The article addresses logistical and conceptual issues involved in course planning and implementation.

Religious Non-Places: Corporate Megachurches and Their Contributions to Consumer Capitalism

The corporate megachurch represents a pecuniarily driven institution that both emphasizes marketing for the purposes of constant growth, and focuses on the manufacture and delivery of consumer-centric goods and services. This article draws on the theory of the non-place as conceptualized by Augé, who argues that the non-place is a direct effect of contemporary capitalism’s incessant incursion into ever more areas of life. The non-place refers to any variety of transitory sites that lack historical, cultural, or geographic reference points, and while they seem to be everywhere one is left with the sense of being ‘nowhere’ in particular. One such place that lacks distinguishing features and fails to provide any contextual reference is the corporate megachurch. Because of its strategic work to distance itself from traditional Christian churches and focus instead on creating homologies with entertainment, self-help, and retail, the non-place church normalizes the banality of consumer capitalism.

Punk May Just Be Dead

It may appear that punk rock has been appropriated by the profiteers rather than proffering any genuine sort of rebellion. One need look no further than MTV or even the local suburban mall to witness crowds of young women and men who, with (dis)affected sneers and neck and ‘sleeve’ tattoos, contribute to lining the pockets of the expanding corporate class – from the ‘cool hunters’ on the streets to the executives in the boardroom. It would seem that the majority of today’s selfbranded punks are more likely to consume their rebellion through mass media, mainstream retail, and the entrails of contrived marketing gimmicks than through the do-it-yourself bricolage of yesteryear. Commitment, creativity, and resourcefulness no longer serve as gatekeepers to participation in a punk identity (or many other identities for that matter). Instead, any variety of retail outlets can provide the self with the tools needed to adopt forms of personal expression. Like Barbara Kruger’s Cartesian corrective, ‘I shop therefore I am’, today’s citizen-consumer can opt to be anyone she chooses. A personal identity is easily accessed at points of purchases. In fact, with late capitalism’s form of meritocracy, you can be anyone you desire, so long as you have the cash or credit. One’s freedom is limitless insofar as one is free to spend money or incur debt – and this is no less true when it comes to rebellion, anti-conformity, and dissent (cf. Frank, 1998). To this, Kruger might add, ‘I shop, therefore I protest [even that I shop]’. That one is able to realize such commodified ‘sedition’ is bound up with what Slavoj Zizek calls false disidentification. This concept suggests that the simple belief that one’s subjectivity can be walled off – such that there is a private, interior self that is an autonomous entity separate from an

The Gimmick: Or, The Productive Labor of Nonliving Bodies

Counter to Bruno Gulli’s claims, above, the dead do in fact continue to labor. There are always active remainders; traces of a life once lived: “The social corpse is imbued with presence and personhood.”2 For some, the dead body provides a kind of serene comfort and reassurance that, even if not all is right in the world, there is at least some verisimilitude of a comforting presence. For others, the dead body is a source of terror. Either way, the lifeless body labors—it produces something—even if that something is only an affect or an affectation for abjection. Bodies continue after death to produce attachments, aversions, and other emotions.