Conclusion

Abstract

Social theorists have repeatedly denounced the inexorable process of disenchantment within modern societies that allegedly leads technical rationality to progressively displace any noninstrumental cultural logic from social life. According to this view such a process has pushed furthest within the market sphere. Economic reality, however, seems to indicate that this is not the case. During the past three decades, a culturalist strand within economic sociology has shown that culture has not been squeezed out of the market. On the contrary, it actively participates to shape economic action and even to make it viable. Pressures toward market disenchantment, in other words, coexist with concurrent counterpressures towards reenchantment. Quite curiously, this strand of sociological literature has paid almost no attention to the widespread resurfacing of the sacred in the market. The percolation of religious codes, metaphors, rituals, and identities into market experience would deserve a systematic consideration within sociology. Only Bourdieu seemed to have taken notice of such a phenomenon. In an interview, for example, he accused Hans Tietmeyer, former president of the Bundesbank, of holding up to a “rationalized mythology” that is grounded upon a “monetarist religion” (Rulff 1997). Tietmeyer’s system of thought, Bourdieu said, is just “fully grounded delirium: so did Durkheim define religion.”¹