‘eBay’-ing religion?
It’s an overly ambitious task to test your competence (and your back pocket wallet) at internet auctions. Immigrants to this endeavour may skeptically oversee the act as a need to generate publicity but for those of us that are less foreign to the practice will recognize early on that the auction ground is much a site for negotiation as it is for selling religiosity.
While not everyone may be so privileged as to purchase the iconic grilled-cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary on it [1] or to tattoo one’s self with an auctioned off Church logo, eBay has, nonetheless, revolutionized its religious configuration in marketing artifacts representative of institutionalized-faith.
Indeed, there is appeal in exploring its orientation for selling notoriously spiritualized symbols; whether it’s a deluxe, two-piece Cross pendant or the old statue of Saint Hubert — one man’s trash is always another fervent Christian follower’s treasure.
It is fair to equate, then, eBay as more than a site for mutual marketing but instead, as an operation that juggles the transaction between capitalist venture and the less dominant consumers on the bottom of this ‘vertically integrated’ [2] autocracy. If one is to probe beneath these dainty deals and ‘Today’s Featured Collections’ [3], there is an evident covering of “Capitalist Spirtuality”[4]– a term coined by authors Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, in which they describe the packaging of religion under edifices supporting corporate motives for profit.
The substance of spirituality, itself, is rebranded into a collective of religious qualities linked with contemporary capitalism. Even if you’re not admittedly a shopaholic, there is a clear dissonance between systems of materialistic accumulation that seem to implicate a secular or even a spiritual desire for the elusive. Applications like eBay,as authors Jonas Ridderstråle and Kjell Nordström describe, are ideal capitalist interventions that appear as a sort of therapeutic mode for fulfilling these isolating voids when, in converse, they just end up fuelling an oppressive cycle [5].
Thus, we should converse with the idea of a complementary relationship between popular culture and mass-cultural products in order to reiterate the symbiosis between articles of cultural consumption that are merchandised through the vehicle of eBay. In the end, the consumer is left with a long receipt in their hand along with the experience of being conditioned towards these neoliberal [6] structures. There is merit, then, to encourage the exchange of the consumer in both the religious and corporate spheres in order to implement more impartial judgement in the usage and interaction with such a site using education as the apparatus.
References:
[1]“Women ‘blessed by the holy toast.” BBC News. Web. November 17 2014. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4019295.stm
[2] Harris, Jennifer. “Censorship in Hollywood.” Lecture. University of Toronto. Toronto, Canada.
[3] “eBay Daily Deals.” eBay. Web. http://deals.ebay.com/daily-deals
[4] Carrette Jeremy and Richard King. “Spirituality and the Privatisation of Asian Wisdom Traditions.” In Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion, 87–122. London: Routledge, 2005.
[5] Jonas Ridderstråle, Kjell Nordström. “The Makeup of Models.” Karaoke Capitalism: Daring to be Different in a copycat world. Bookhouse Publishing. Sweden,2005.
[6]Klassen, Chris. “Religion and Popular Culutre.” InReligion and Popular Culutre: A Cultural Studies Approach, 7–28. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2014.
