Faith, Neoliberalism, and the End of the World (AR3025Z)

Undergraduate, 18.0 points

Content

Religion has a great deal to say about the end of the world, with a rich apocalyptic tradition featured prominently in the Abrahamic faiths. However, people of faith – and everyone else – must now reckon with late modernity, an epoch where (to paraphrase Fredric Jameson) the demise of capitalism seems less imaginable than the end of the world. In the neoliberal imaginary, where markets reign and the future is reconfigured as a continuation of an endless present – w(h)ither faith?

Unit code: AR3025Z

Unit status: Approved (New unit)

Points: 18.0

Unit level: Undergraduate Level 3

Unit discipline: Religious Studies

Proposing College: Wollaston Theological College

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Learning outcomes

1.

Outline the emergence, evolution, and present shape(s) of neoliberalism.
2.

Analyse the apocalyptic/eschatological tenets of at least one religious tradition, including evolutions and adaptations of the tradition in response to the conditions of late modernity.

3.

Critically assess the role religion has played in shaping present conditions and how it may continue to do so in the future.

Unit sequence

No prerequsites

Pedagogy

Lectures/seminars and tutorials.

Indicative Bibliography

  • Al-Bagdadi, Nadia, David Marno, and Matthias Riedl, eds. Apocalyptic Complex: Perspectives, Histories, Persistence. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2018.
  • Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York, NY: Zone Books, 2015.
  • Davies, William. The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business sold us Well-Being. London: Verso, 2016.
  • Dreher, Sabine, and Peter J. Smith, eds. Religious Activism in the Global Economy: Promoting, Reforming, or Resisting Neoliberal Globalization? London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.
  • Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–79. Translated by G. Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008..
  • Guest, Mathew. Neoliberal Religion: Faith and Power in the Twenty-first Century. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.
  • Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
  • McFague, Sallie. Blessed are the Consumers: Climate Change and the Practice of Restraint. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013.
  • Mirowski, Philip. Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. London: Verso, 2013.
  • Possamai, Adam. The i-zation of Society, Religion, and Neoliberal Post-secularism. Singapore: Springer, 2018.
  • Weber, Max. Economy and Society. Translated by K. Tribe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019.

Assessment

Type Description Word count Weight (%)
Forum

5x100 words

 500 15.0
Essay 2500 45.0
Written Examination 2000 40.0
Approvals

Unit approved for the University of Divinity by Prof Albert Haddad on 12 Sep, 2023

Unit record last updated: 2023-09-12 13:31:43 +1000