Religion Philosophy

GONZLEZ

George Gonzlezs broad erudition and eye for ethnographic detail make this a welcome
addition to the growing field of workplace spirituality. With a thorough, perceptive grounding
in the intellectual history of organizational theory, Shape-Shifting Capital: Spiritual Management, Critical Theory, and the Ethnographic Project offers readers a sophisticated yet utterly
accessible road map to the core issues of religion at work.
Bethany Moreton, University of Georgia

Michael D. Jackson, Harvard Divinity School

Shape-Shifting Capital: Workplace Spirituality, Critical Theory, and the Ethnographic Project
is positioned at the intersection of anthropology, critical theory, and philosophy of religion.
First, George Gonzlez explores the phenomenon of workplace spirituality in language
that is accessible to a general readership. Taking contemporary trends in organizational management as a case study, he argues, by way of a detailed ethnographic study of
practitioners of workplace spirituality, that the conceptual and institutional boundaries
between religion, science, and Capitalism are being redrawn by theologized management
appropriations of tropes borrowed from creativity theory and quantum mechanics. Then,
Gonzlez makes a case for a critical anthropology of religion that combines existential
concerns for biography and intentionality with poststructuralist concerns for power, arguing
that the ways in which the personalization of metaphor bridges personal and social histories
also help to bring about broader epistemic shifts in society. Finally, in a postsecular age in
which Capitalism itself is explicitly and confidently spiritual, Gonzlez suggests that it is
imperative to reorient our critical energies towards a present-day evaluation of postmodern Capitalisms boundary-blurring. Gonzlez further argues that the kind of existential
deconstruction performed by what he calls existential archeology can serve the needs of
any social criticism of neoliberal religion and corporate spirituality.
GEORGE GONZLEZ is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, Religion, and
Interdisciplinary Studies at Monmouth University.
LEXINGTON BOOKS
An imprint of
Rowman & Littlefield
800-462-6420 www.rowman.com

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SHAPE-SHIFTING CAPITAL

This book is a landmark work in the relatively new field of workplace spirituality. Using
ethnographic and phenomenological methods, Gonzlez shows that human existence cannot
be reduced to sui generis categories such as religion or reason, the spiritual or the corporate.
His point of departure is, rather, the vexed and complex ways in which the struggle for a
livelihood plays out in workaday and quotidian settings. This brilliant book offers exciting new
horizons for an existential archeology of our times, for the study of religion in everyday life,
and for the critique of Capitalism in a digital age. 

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