This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Neubert, F. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Indicating Commitment

The Notion of Dépense in the Study of Religion and Ritual

University of Lucerne, Switzerland, frankneubert{at}gmx.de

By analysing two cases from the recent history of Vaishnavism (a temple festival in Vrindavan; the development of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON), this paper shows that the notion of dépense as developed by Marcel Mauss, Robert Hertz and Georges Bataille can be applied as an analytical tool in the study of rituals and religion as an indicator of religious commitment. At the same time it is possible to show that, by constructing a kind of macro-economic theory that includes religious behaviour, recent theories of religious economics are part of, and reproduce, a modern discourse of rationality that rules out, rather than understands, forms of irrationality such as unproductive expenditure (dépense).

Key Words: Bataille • dépense • Hertz • ISKCON • Mauss • rational choice theory • ritual

Journal of Classical Sociology, Vol. 8, No. 2, 306-320 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1468795X08088876


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?