Peter J. Bräunlein: Spiritual and social capital as analytical tools for understanding New Religious Movements in the Philippines

My paper starts with some more general ideas about commodification, politization and religion in order to underline the obvious connection between globalization and the erosion of moral values, social relations and coherent world views. Under certain circumstances religions function as compensation for the losses and deprivations caused by forces of global modernity. ‘Modernity’, however, is, as Talal Asad has convincingly demonstrated, a disputed category, especially when the relationship between modernity and secularization has to be clarified. This is also true for the term commodification, especially when phrases such as “social”, “spiritual” or “religious” capital are used.
After raising theoretical and conceptual questions, two ethnographic examples from the Philippines are presented. By the first case – ritual crucifixions – the question is raised, what kind of religious (or social or spiritual) capital is negotiated within such a religious movement. The second example is related to another, much larger religious group, the catholic charismatic El-Shaddai movement, which offers besides profound personal transformations, a wide range of “products”: healing, social advancement, upward mobility, wealth. “Investments in miracles”, which is the central feature of the El Shaddai movement, cannot be studied without reference to economic conceptual tools such as market, social and spiritual capital.