Compelling book from Mark C. Taylor, brilliant theologian and critical theorist, called Confidence Games, comparing religion and the market economy - both of them leaps of faith in the face of the complexity of life. Here's the blurb:
As money becomes virtual and markets more complex, the ways in which we talk about the economy increasingly resonate with religious overtones. Redemption, faith, worth, the invisible hand: these are but a few of the ideas that bind economics to religion and money to the sacred. But what do we make of markets when, like religion, they now rest on a foundation of faith? Ranging from John Calvin and Adam Smith to the abandonment of the gold standard and the dot-com boom, Confidence Games shows how religion and economics have, over the past several decades, become less and less distinguishable.
Mark C. Taylor first explores the historical and psychological origins of money, the importance of religious beliefs and practices for the emergence of markets, and the unexpected role of aesthetics in the classical understanding of economics. He then moves to an account of economic developments during the past four decades, exploring the growing virtuality of money and markets, and the complexity of the networks by which monetary value is now negotiated and conferred.
Returning full circle to a version of the market first proposed by Adam Smith when he used theology and aesthetics to rethink economics, Confidence Games closes with a plea for a conception of life that embraces uncertainty and insecurity as signs of the openness of the future. Like religion and economics, life is a confidence game in which the challenge is not to find redemption but to learn to live without it.
Well, there you go - a must read for this weblog. Interesting interview-let here. Also check out Taylor's own network initiative, Global Education Network.
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