The Libertarian Ethic and The Spirit of Global Capital: Post-Industrial Spirituality of the American Workplace Open Access
LoRusso, James Dennis (2014)
Abstract
In recent decades, the business world has demonstrated an elevated interest in the role that "spirituality" might play in the workplace. Corporate executives, researchers in fields such as management and organizational behavior, and popular authors suggest that recognizing the "spiritual" dimensions of work can not only have a positive effect on employee morale, but simultaneously elevate productivity as well as bottom-line profits.
Although scholars of religion have asserted a number reasons for this trend, their explanations prove myopic. I contend that "workplace spirituality," as it has been dubbed, is neither a coherent religious movement in its own right, nor is it merely the extension of the church into business, as others have suggested. Instead, my analysis, which employs ethnography as well as social history, reveals something more basic has changed over the last half century in the way Americans think and behave towards work, and these changes remain inextricably bound to large-scale socio-economic trends over the latter half of the twenty-first century. It is part of a shift from a national economy defined by heavy industry, to a globalized one driven by high technology, finance, and mass consumption. New forms of work that depend greatly on interpersonal skills and emotional labor have risen to the fore. Amidst these new forms of work, I argue, some Americans have turned to rhetorics of spirituality to understand the role of work in their lives, in the society, and in the world.
This dissertation, however, pushes the discussion further, to elucidate the political dimensions of workplace spirituality. Neoliberalism, a range of pro-business attitudes that seeks to minimize government intervention into the economy, is an integral and underappreciated component of workplace spirituality. The rhetoric of spirituality at work embraces the "spirit" of global capitalism; it celebrates the power of business, operating under the auspices of deregulated markets, to advance human material and spiritual progress. Moreover, it instills within its practitioners a libertarian ethos that valorizes personal responsibility and affords individuals with a sense of power and significance in a world shaped less by nation-states and increasingly dominated by the dynamics of a global marketplace.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
1
CHAPTER 1: The Welfare State and Its Discontents
The American Workplace in 1950
Agency Panic and Fears of the Welfare State
Human Freedom and a Nascent Neoliberalism
22
25
30
39
CHAPTER 2: Work in Post-Industrial America: Towards a Humanistic Capitalism
Abraham Maslow and the Humanistic Work Ethic
Willis Harman: Post-Industrial Spiritual Prophet
Subjective Knowledge, Spirituality, and Post-Industrial Society
The Legacy of Willis Harman
47
51
58
63
66
CHAPTER 3: Management, Spirituality, and Religion: Business Scholarship as Theology
The Servant Leader
Spirit at Work
Workplace Spirituality as Theology
73
75
79
85
CHAPTER 4: Zen and the Art of Micro-processing: Liberating the Entrepreneurial Spirit in Silicon Valley
Steve Jobs: The Seeker Entrepreneur
Spiritual Bricolage
The "Reality Distortion Field"
Les Kaye: Zen and Work
103
106
112
114
118
CHAPTER 5: Looser selves, Freer Markets
A Texas-Sized Counterculture
A Turn to the Political Right
The Genesis of Conscious Capitalism
Mapping a Post-Industrial Habitus
129
132
136
141
144
CHAPTER 6: Not the Usual Suspects: Real Estate Rabbis, Monastic Managers, and Spiritual Salesmen in the Big Apple
The New York Groups
Competing Aims
Class Power, The Great Recession, and Neoliberalism
149
151
153
163
CHAPTER 7: SACRED COMMERCE: Neoliberal Spiritualities in a West-Coast Coffee Chain
Café Gratitude and Sacred Commerce
Spiritual Rhetoric at Café Gratitude
Embodying Neoliberalism
Abounding River
177
178
182
188
192
CONCLUSION
199
BIBLOGRAPHY
209
Figures
Figure 1
166
About this Dissertation
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