Economic Development and Religion
Economic development and religion explores the relationship between economic growth and religious beliefs and practices. It examines how religion can influence economic development through its impact on social norms, values, and behaviors. This field of study also investigates how economic development, in turn, can shape religious beliefs and practices within societies.
6 Key excerpts on "Economic Development and Religion"
eBook - ePub- Adam B. Cohen, Adam B. Cohen(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Baylor University Press(Publisher)
...13 The Economics of Religion in Developing Countries Sriya Iyer “The number of micro-level social anthropological studies is continually growing. Many of these concentrate on what to the economist may appear odd aspects of society such as ritual and religion . .. and to which he pays little or no attention. For instance, an understanding of the complex of Hindu religious beliefs as they operate at village level . .. is directly relevant to the problem of developing India’s economy.” 1 A major international study of over 230 countries, 2,500 censuses and surveys, released by the Pew Research Centre in 2012, showed that 84 percent (5.8 billion) of the world’s population currently report a religious affiliation. The world’s major religious groups are Christians (32 percent), Muslims (23 percent), Hindus (15 percent), Buddhists (7 percent), and Jews (0.2 percent). 2 The geographical distribution of adherents over time also revealed that while rich countries are getting more secular, the world overall is getting more religious. In less developed countries, we have seen rising incomes with economic growth, increasing inequality, the resilience of religion, and greater religious conflict over the past twenty years. So it seems important to think about how religion might contribute to human flourishing in these contexts more carefully. The Economics of Religion The economics of religion is a relatively new field of research in economics. 3 In this field, one can apply economic and statistical tools to evaluate the role of religion in society. This field evaluates economic theories that elucidate religious change and the socioeconomic attributes of religious communities...
eBook - ePubEconomy/Society
Markets, Meanings, and Social Structure
- Bruce G. Carruthers, Sarah Louise Babb(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...More recently, however, economists’ advice to developing countries has become more diverse and more open to considering the nonmarket foundations of development. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first examines how economic development should be defined. The second section looks at some of the advice that economists have given to developing countries since the founding of their discipline—and the ways that governments have followed and ignored that advice. Finally, the third section looks at sociological contributions to development debates. Economic Development Defined If you have traveled back and forth between the developed and the developing world, you have an intuitive understanding of what economic development means—you know it when you see it. In reality, however, the meaning of economic development is more difficult to pin down than it appears. Development, the process of improving people’s lives over time, is a fundamentally relative concept, in the sense that what counts as “developed” changes over time. One of the problems of underdeveloped countries is that they have no fixed point of development to catch up to: As countries such as the United States continue to grow and become more technologically sophisticated, countries such as Mexico are in danger of falling increasingly far behind. Development is also a complex and contested concept, in the sense that there are different views about the best way to define and measure it. A half century ago, development experts agreed that development was best defined by national income per capita—that is, the total value of the goods and services produced by a nation over a period of time divided by the number of people. This is no longer the case, for reasons we will examine shortly...
eBook - ePubThe History of Development
From Western Origins to Global Faith
- Gilbert Rist, Patrick Camiller(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Zed Books(Publisher)
...As the Human Development Report 1991 puts it: ‘Just as economic growth is necessary for human development, human development is critical to economic growth’ (p. 2). Or, in the 1992 Report: ‘The issue is not only how much economic growth, but what kind of economic growth’ (p. 2). It is easy to see that in practice, economic growth is what is pursued, in the name of ‘development’. 33. Beyond any moral judgement of this way of presenting ‘development’, it should be noted that everyone chooses the definition that suits them best in the light of their practical interests, allowing them to retain the position they occupy within the particular field. 34. The choice of Christianity for this comparison does not imply any value judgement. The same conclusions would be reached by asking members of the Communist Party to define classless society. 35. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life [ 1912 ], New York: The Free Press, 1995, p. 9. 36. Ibid., p. 44. 37. Ibid., p. 436. 38. Ibid., p. 420. 39. It is well known that the religion based upon love of one’s neighbour has also served to justify, among other things, slavery, the Inquisition, witch-hunting, wars of religion, and colonization – not because the belief content has varied, but because society could not but lay claim to it (by reinterpreting it) in order to assure its own cohesion. 40. See Marie-Dominique Perrot, Gilbert Rist and Fabrizio Sabelli, La My-thologie programmée. L’économie des croyances dans la société moderne, Paris: PUF, 1992. 41. See Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern [ 1991 ], New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. 42. The ruling ideology – to quote Marx – is produced by the ruling class...
eBook - ePubGeographies of Muslim Identities
Diaspora, Gender and Belonging
- Peter Hopkins, Cara Aitchison, Cara Aitchison(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 10 Islam and National Development: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Role of Religion in the Process of Economic Development and Cultural Change Samuel Zalanga Introduction Since the classical work of German sociologist Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, research in the social sciences has broadened discussions of economic development to include the role of cultural values and ideas in general in the process of economic development and cultural change. Much of this work focused initially on the experience of Western societies and, particularly, the role of Christianity in the process of socio-economic transformation. The implicit assumption in such analysis is the lack of internal capacity in other faith traditions to facilitate socio-economic transformation such as the type that took place in Europe and North America following the industrial revolution. However, with the phenomenal success of East and Southeast Asian societies in economic development and cultural change during late modernity, researchers started to focus on the ideas, beliefs and values that perform roles that are functionally equivalent to the ‘protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism’ within other religions. Yet even with this concession, scholars like Samuel Huntington (1984) have argued that the religion of Islam is not conducive to the promotion of economic development and democracy, both of which are integral elements of modernity. This chapter contributes to this debate by discussing the role of Islam in the process of economic development and cultural change by engaging in a cross-cultural comparison of the role of Islam in national development in Malaysia and Nigeria. The chapter adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to demonstrate how, through the intersection of geography, history, politics, organizational leadership and nationalism, Islam has played different roles in shaping national development in the two countries...
eBook - ePubEconomic Development
The History of an Idea
- H. W. Arndt(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
...Social classes will crystallise and confront each other. Instead of a moneyed bourgeoisie, one will perhaps have a bureaucratic bourgeoisie, but the result will be similar. The cities will develop, the country stagnate. . .. Propelled by economism and the consumer society, materialism will engender unlimited greed and false wants. . .. Men will let themselves be dominated by egoism, the old social links of family and ethnic community will lose their force without being replaced by new communal ties. . .. Our generation has learned that development of consumption is not an end in itself, that production has its limits, that the quality of life is important. Scientific progress has been put into question by Hiroshima. Many of the old certainties have been shattered. 2 By contrast, R. M. Sundrum has no doubt that economic development is desirable and that modernisation is the way to promote it: The central problem of development economics is to understand the nature of the process which has transformed the DCs in the past, why it has not occurred in the LDCs and what may be done to promote it in the future. . . . What can be done is implicit in a definition of development in terms of the pervasiveness of modern economic behaviour and the ability of people to absorb modern technology, based on education, infrastructure and institutions. On this view, a society can be considered more developed, the higher the education of its members, the greater the supply of infrastructure and the better its economic institution for encouraging modern technology. 3 Perhaps the reader should be left to ponder the relative merits of these two sharply opposed points of view. But if I were asked to declare my own preferences more openly than I have already done between the lines in the preceding pages, I would once again quote the wisest of development economists: The advantage of economic growth is not that wealth increases happiness, but that it increases the range of human choice. . ....
eBook - ePubReligion in Society
A Sociology of Religion
- Ronald Johnstone(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Religion and the Economy DOI: 10.4324/9781315662916-9 Religion in the Economy. In line with an underlying principle made explicit throughout this book, namely, that religion is in a continuous reciprocal and interdependent relationship with society and its institutions, we now turn to one of society’s most important institutions (some would say, the most important)—the economy. We can initially observe that religion, although often legitimately viewed as a semiautonomous social system (societal institution) paralleling other institutions, is itself in various ways a part of the inclusive economic system of a society—it is an employer; it buys and sells; it owns property; it contributes to the gross national product (the amount spent annually on all goods and services). A brief look at religion as an active participant in the economy constitutes the first section of this chapter. The major section that follows looks at religion’s influence on economic relationships in a society. We will, then, in a third section, conclude with an assessment of how and to what degree religion has an impact on the economy and vice versa. Religion as an Economic Institution Two obvious ways in which organized religion plays an economic role in most societies is as an employer (providing the economic livelihood for religious professionals and their families) and as an owner of property and a builder of facilities. Although there are no precise figures available concerning the number of persons employed by religious organizations, we do know that as of 1987, there were at least 530,763 members of the clergy in the United States. 1 But even this figure is not comprehensive, inasmuch as not all religious groups report statistics to the National Council of Churches. Conservatively, we would therefore estimate that there are at least 650,000 clergy members in the United States alone...
