Were the most successful of the religious utopian communities though they accumulation of private property they were able to support their community through the sale of?

Asceticism indicates a type of behavior that tends to submit impulses, passions, and desires of an individual to a systematic way of life in order to achieve what he considers his elective nature and which he feels called to. The concept of asceticism has paved the way towards its first and most wide spread practice within a religious environment and it can be found in all religions of salvation based on the constant practice of virtues which are pleasing to God. In sociology, Durkheim, Weber, and Troeltsch all ask themselves about the importance of asceticism in the edification of the modern world; for Durkheim asceticism is the core of every religion and, as society and religion end up by amalgamating, it becomes inevitable in the behavioral ethos of the secular citizen; Weber sees asceticism as a method to obtain the state of grace needed for the salvation of one's soul; for Troeltsch the ascetic dimension is not separated by a sort of implicit protest towards the surrounding society. Ranging from the cells of the monks to the austerity of the militants of the revolutions in every age, to the sacrifice for the city or country, through all different levels of public duties, asceticism remains one of the elements that structures ethical behaviors raised to a voluntary methodology of social behaviors, considered as building behaviours of a new community of rebuilding an already existing community.

Conclusion

The practice of asceticism is found in various forms throughout history, but its two most studied forms have occurred in Christianity. It was found first in the ‘world-fleeing’ form in the early desert ascetics and then in medieval monks, and then in the ‘inner-worldly’ form of some of the early Reformers. While most of the adherents to these forms believe in a dualism of soul and body, the ‘world-fleeing’ ascetic denigrates the world while the ‘inner-worldly’ ascetic accepts the world and works in it in order to praise God. All reject the notion of the material enjoyment of wealth, but the Puritan ascetic believed that wealth gained through hard work was a sign that one was a member of the Elect.

The greatest impetus for someone to become an ascetic monk was the realization of one's own sense of sin. This is not the recognition of doing one or two sinful deeds; rather, it was the steady and vividly self-conscious sense of continual sin (Heussi, 1936: p. 190). Without that sense of sin, there is little reason to engage in asceticism. It was Adolf von Harnack, one of the greatest of the Protestant Church historians, who indicated the reasons for the decline in asceticism. He suggested that when the belief in sin and guilt is replaced by the Paulinian-Augustinian trinity of ‘faith, love, and hope,’ asceticism no longer has such a compelling power over people (Harnack, 1916: pp. 156–158). But, for those who despise the body and renounce the world, asceticism will always be a way of life.

Renunciation and Societal Life

A third axiom is the presumed value of asceticism and renunciation. From as early as the Upanishads (600 BCE) a valued strand in the Hindu tradition has been the life of renunciation and asceticism. It is impossible to know how many Hindus actually renounced family life and set out on a full quest for enlightenment (moksha). The search for enlightenment and release from the rounds of birth and death was seen as a strenuous undertaking, often accompanied by ascetic practices, and always over a long period of multiple lifetimes. Hindu ascetics were called sadhus (‘good’ or ‘pious’); they renounced the householder’s life and practiced tapas. Even some of the gods, most notably Shiva, practiced tapas. Tapas means ‘heat,’ then the pain that comes from heat, and then suffering in general, particularly when it was self-inflicted on the path to enlightenment. Such a vision of the good might not only involve practices in which the body was mortified, but also certain clear ethical principles as well.

No community carried the value of renunciation further than the Jains (dating from Mahavira, fifth century BCE). They emphasized the principle of ahimsa (noninjury) to such an extent that it influenced when and where they traveled (so as not to tread on living organisms), made them strict vegetarians, and resulted in particular care in putting away unused food. They also took a vow of truthfulness that necessitated that they never speak without careful deliberation, a vow against taking what is not one’s own, and a vow upholding chastity and renouncing of all attachments to pleasant colors, sounds, and smells. Such a renunciant was a homeless wanderer, dependent upon alms giving for food and carrying a bare minimum of possessions.

Alongside this value placed on renunciation, ordinary society continued to exist, without which there would be no one to give alms to renunciants. How was one to reconcile the obvious needs of society with this value placed on renunciation? The most common way was through the fourfold class system and the four stages in life. These are important for they make it clear that some principles are universal only on the sense that they cover all persons at a certain stage in life. What was expected of an individual in terms of ethical action came to be called dharma. Dharma means law, custom, or appropriate action. It suggests that one’s dharma is always appropriate to the way the universe is. There is a certain dharma for each stage in life and for each class. At any one point in time, then, one’s svadhamra (own dharma) is determined by these two grids of four.

As for the classes, Brahmins are intended to be the spiritual leaders and to meet the religious needs of the people. Even though it was probably never the case that all Brahmins were priests or teachers, that was considered good or appropriate action for them. The second class were Kshatriyas. These were kings and warriors. The Bhagavadgita, a highly influential religious text, begins with the moral dilemma of the warrior who does not want to kill because he sees members of his extended family in the opposing army. Krishna, the teacher who is understood to be god as the text unfolds, offers a variety of reasons why the warrior should fight. One of those is that as a Kshatriya it is his dharma to do so. While, then, it might be inappropriate for a Brahmin to march into battle and inflict death on the enemy, the Kshatriya is duty bound to do so. The Hindu tradition, then, although it values ahimsa or nonviolence, did not promote pacifism.

The Vaishya was the business and economic leader and therefore, however strong the urge to renunciation might be, it would not be appropriate for the Vaishya. The Shudra was a servant who did menial tasks. All such activities were considered good, however, since they were appropriate to the given class into which one was born. In time certain groups of persons were considered outside this system, partially because of occupations that rendered them impure. They came to be called untouchables. (See Table 1 for a summary of the caste system.)

In addition to the four classes, there developed a scheme that divided life into four stages. An individual lived as a student until marriage when one entered the life of a householder. Then, when one’s first grandchild was born one had the option of becoming a ‘forest-dweller’ and seeking to strive toward enlightenment with more intensity. This state and the final one intersects with the goal of renunciation. The final stage was one who was beyond the stages or ashramas, and such a person wandered homelessly. Such persons were later called sannyasins.

In this way, the Hindu tradition continued to place value on renunciation while making place for ordinary social and economic existence. While it might not be appropriate behavior for a Brahmin renunciate to accumulate material goods, it was certainly quite appropriate for the householder and particularly the Vaishya. If activity connected with death, leather, or human excrement would defile the Brahmin and would therefore be unacceptable behavior, there were always the Shudras or untouchables to carry on such activities. In spite of the inevitable pollution, it was their dharma to do such work. And, as the Bhagavadgita taught, it is better to act out one’s own dharma, even if imperfectly, than to seek to imitate the dharma of another. By attending to one’s own svadharma or own duty one was likely to elevate oneself in the next life to a more advantageous class. That different expectations attach to different persons and different stages in life is not merely a theoretical scheme, but again a cultural value that bubbles up and is invoked for purposes of explanation and legitimization from time to time.

Renunciation

The distinction here between prophet and renunciant contrasts the fiery outrage of the prophet with the quietude and asceticism of the renunciant. It is not that a renunciant does not criticize the existing order nor that the renunciant is necessarily disengaged from social activity – some renunciants have been deeply involved in social change – but that the renunciant tends to be focused on experimenting with alternative ways of living, trying to embody utopian values here and now, in private and social life. Typically, renunciants are less interested in denouncing than in relinquishing. Self-perfection through discipline and the letting go of wealth, power, and status must accompany social improvement.

One of the most important renunciatory movements in history began in the kingdom of Magadha in Northeast India sometime around the beginning of the 6th century BC. This movement gave birth to both Jainism and Buddhism and helped in the formation of Hinduism. In Jainism and Buddhism (also in Hinduism, though in a more complex way) renunciation became part of a comprehensive system of human perfection, which included peace and nonviolence. This model of peacefulness was unique in the ancient world since it emphasized renunciation of violence against all living beings, human and nonhuman; integrated moral rules within a comprehensive system of training; and, in the case of Jainism and Buddhism, grounded these values in ultimacy but without theism.

Many modern Buddhist organizations committed to peace and justice, such as the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, retain the traditional flavor of Buddhist renunciatory teachings, stressing simplicity of lifestyle, meditation, and the development of compassion. At the same time, lay people of both sexes have taken a leading role in many such organizations and there exists a degree of criticism of traditional monasticism both for its tendencies to disengage itself from the world and for its tendencies to compromise with secular powers.

The influence of the ancient Indian stream of renunciatory spirituality and its critique of dominant society and the war system extends beyond Asia. Both of the central figures in the development of twentieth-century nonviolence, Gandhi and Tolstoy, were deeply influenced by it, and it is, in part, through them that the renunciatory ideal has become entrenched in contemporary peace spirituality. Tolstoy was largely frustrated in his personal attempts to live a renunciatory existence, but Gandhi put his ideals into action. Gandhi became one of the most influential figures in the 20th century through his ability to merge an ancient Indian ascetical ideal, buttressed by a solid grounding in the Hindu religious tradition, with an activism, cosmopolitanism, and political sophistication that allowed him to be understood outside his own tradition.

In addition to the transmission from India, there have been other, largely independent renunciatory traditions, including Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions, and these too have developed a critique of the war system. In Judaism, the Essenes were an early renunciatory sect that apparently experimented with a doctrine of nonretaliation, rooted possibly in early Biblical texts in Exodus and Proverbs that called for aid to one's enemy. In Islam, while the prophetic tradition has developed principles of just war, many powerful statements in favor of peace are found in the renunciatory tradition, in Sufism of both the early and late period. During much of Christian history, radical renunciatory spiritualities with a strong critique of war and violence developed as conscious alternatives to dominant forms of Christianity. Some of these groups were denounced and persecuted as heretical by the Church. Anabaptism and Quakerism, so influential in bringing pacifism and peacemaking into the modern world, were able to survive persecution, but preReformation groups were often decimated. Few Waldensians and virtually no Cathars survived the medieval persecutions to carry forward their witness against violence. In the modern period, Roman Catholic renunciatory activism has been well represented by figures such as Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Philip and Daniel Berrigan. Christian renunciatory traditions have been in direct contact with those originating in India and there has been an ongoing process of dialog toward the formation of trans-sectarian peace spirituality.

Dispassion

Coupled to absorption is a capacity for what Horan, in 2007, translated as dispassion (vairāgya), an individual's ability to detach from fixed interpretations of reality, a quality which promotes openness, empathy, wisdom, and creativity. This construct is exemplified in the story of Śikhidvaja and Cūdālā in the Yogavāsişţha, a renowned Hindu scripture illustrating the power of the mind. Cūdālā, the queen, teaches her husband, Śikhidvaja, that spiritual enlightenment cannot be attained by detachment from material things or even the body (asceticism), but by detachment from closely-held assumptions and interpretations of reality. Asceticism, or self-denial, is a common spiritual practice in monastic settings. In attempting to transcend desire, asceticism may promote a sense of separation from material phenomena eliciting, in response, a clinging to the concept of detachment itself which forms a major obstacle to spiritual evolution. If not approached properly, detachment can also lead to pathologically disassociated states. On the other hand, Donald G. Forgays and Deborah K. Forgays, in 1992, noted that sensory deprivation, a form of induced detachment, elicited creativity. In this respect, sense withdrawal acts as a constraint. Although the neuropsychological mechanisms connecting creativity to sensory deprivation are unclear, one could speculate that sensory inhibition activates the hypnogogic state. This ambivalent waking-to-sleep state has inspired many creative individuals. In meditative traditions, hypnogogic reverie is considered a dispassionate first step toward transcendence. Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello described the open affective nature of dispassion: “You cannot love what you are not constantly discovering anew, the object of affection may be an artwork or natural beauty as well as a human or the divine” (Anthony De Mello, 1992: 97–98). This love arises by constraining the tendency to concretize interpretations of experience. In science, dispassion takes the form of objectivity which continually challenges basic assumptions and rediscovers the nature of truth, an approach that has stimulated an exponential growth in innovation and technology.

FAITH AND SPIRITUALITY AS RESOURCES IN TREATMENT AND RECOVERY

A detailed review of theory and research that addresses the relationship of religion, spirituality, and eating disorders is beyond the scope of this chapter. We have done this elsewhere and at that time offered several tentative conclusions (Richards et al., 2007):

1.

Religious teachings about asceticism and fasting may contribute to the development of anorexia nervosa (AN) in some women.

2.

Patriarchal or male dominated cultures may contribute to women's feelings of powerlessness and AN may represent an attempt by some women to exert control in their lives in such cultures.

3.

The development of bulimia nervosa (BN) may be associated with a decline in religious devoutness in some women.

4.

Many women who have ED believe that their personal faith and spirituality helped in their treatment and recovery (pp. 208–209).

This chapter briefly discusses only those empirical studies providing evidence that women with ED, and those who have recovered, believe that faith and spirituality were helpful in their treatment and recovery.

Mitchell, Erlander, Pyle & Fletcher (1990) reported that, in a follow-up study of patients with BN, “the single most common write-in answer as to what factors have been helpful in their recovery had to do with religion in the form of faith, pastoral counseling, or prayer” (p. 589). To further explore these issues, they surveyed 50 women with BN, finding that 88% believed in God and approximately 60% prayed or worshipped privately at least several times a month. They concluded that “religious issues are important for many patients with bulimia nervosa. Therapists should consider discussing each patient's religious needs as part of their intervention and be willing to refer to a member of the clergy when appropriate” (pp. 592–593).

Hsu, Crisp & Callender (1992) did follow-up interviews of six patients who had recovered from AN to find out what the patients believed had helped them recover. One patient indicated that her religious beliefs, including prayer, church attendance, and faith in God had helped in her recovery. Hsu et al. (1992) acknowledged that the influence of religion on recovery was “an area that we did not inquire about at all in our interview(s)” and that it was thus “unclear whether it played a part in the recovery of others” (p. 348).

Hall and Cohn (1992) asked former patients (366 women and six men) what activities had aided their recovery from BN and other forms of problem eating. Fifty-nine percent of the respondents said that “spiritual pursuits” had been instrumental and 35% said that a spiritually oriented 12-step program was helpful to them. Rorty, Yager & Rossotto (1993) interviewed 40 women in recovery from BN to find out what had promoted their recovery. Many of the women (25 to 40%) reported that the spiritual aspects of 12-step programs (e.g., Overeaters Anonymous) were useful and others mentioned other forms of spiritual guidance.

Garrett (1996) interviewed 32 anorexics about their self-starvation and recovery. Participants “regarded anorexia nervosa as a distorted form of spirituality.” For many of them, recovery involved rediscovery of the self (p. 1493). Garrett explained that “participants claimed that recovery requires an experience of something (a material reality and/or an energy) beyond the self. They named it ‘spirituality’ or referred to it as ‘love,’ as God or as Nature” (p. 1493).

Smith, Richards & Hardman (2003) quantitatively examined the correlation between growth in spiritual well-being and other positive treatment outcomes in a sample of 251 women who received inpatient treatment for their ED. Improvements in spiritual well-being were positively correlated with improvements in attitudes about eating and body shape, as well as psychological functioning.

Marsden, Karagianni & Morgan (2007) qualitatively interviewed 11 patients at St. George's inpatient ED unit in London, United Kingdom, who indicated that their religion was important to them, in order to examine relationships between ED, religion, and treatment. They found that patients often understood their ED in religious ways and that spirituality enhanced the motivation and improved treatment adherence. They also concluded that for “patients with strong religious faith, spiritual practice is helpful in recovery, and spiritual maturation goes hand in hand with positive psychological changes” (Marsden et al., 2007, p. 11).

A survey of 36 women who had successfully completed an ED inpatient program asked open-ended questions about how their spirituality promoted recovery (Richards et al., 2008). The patients reported that their spirituality gave them purpose and meaning, expanded their sense of identity and worth, helped them experience feelings of forgiveness towards self and others, and improved their relationships with God, family, and others, sustaining them during their most difficult challenges.

4 Both More and Less than an Instrument of State

As rulers in Southeast Asia from ancient times to the present have attempted to harness the political power of religion, certain forms of religion acquire the privileges of official recognition and financial patronage, while others are at best ignored if not censured. When ‘modern state Buddhism’ developed under the patronage of the Chakri dynasty in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it overpowered many regional monastic traditions (Kamala 1997). A tradition of wandering asceticism, among other local Buddhist traditions, has been all but elided from history. Official Thai Buddhism was shaped by the wish to rationalize the faith in relation to a textual canon, whereas localized Thai Buddhism had been rooted in devotional practices, such as meditation, rather than in textual exegesis, and relied more on firsthand relationships between teachers and students than on the literate transmission of knowledge. The official Thai Buddhism also elevated some peculiarly local elements of central Thai experience as the national standard:

The system—still in use today—rests on degrees, examinations, and ranks in the sangha hierarchy. It defines the ideal Buddhist monk as one who observes strict monastic rules, has mastered Wachirayan's printed texts, teaches in Bangkok Thai, carries out administrative duties, observes holy days, and performs religious rituals based on Bangkok customs (Kamala 1997, p. 9).

The considerable numbers of Thai who speak Lao or some other language may thus feel less than comfortable with the orthodoxy deriving from Central Thai traditions.

Religious faith and expression always go well beyond the designs of people in high places. The deepening Islamization of Indonesia and Malaysia in the closing decades of the twentieth century was not wholly an engineered artifact of the Cold War and internal ethnic politics. Muslims worldwide were experiencing a resurgence of faith and confidence, and as travel and communication have reduced the world's distances, Southeast Asia's Muslims easily participate in discourse within the worldwide ummah, the community of Islam. What Indonesians and Malaysians do with or make of their faith is not fully under any government's control. A small handful of Muslim leaders in Indonesia, authorities worry, inspire a ‘fanaticism’ among their followers that could threaten the peace and security of the regime. Other prominent Muslim leaders want to depoliticize Islam. They have become wary of the government's patronage of Islam, seeing there an avenue for political cooptation and control. They disavow the goal of an Islamic state, calling instead for the deep transformation of society through individuals' adherence to the practices of Islam: a revolution of the spirit rather than of the political structure.

Buddhism in Southeast Asia has experienced similar revivals and reinventions, some of which go well beyond what the state intends. In Singapore, for example, with an explicitly secular constitution and state ideology, Buddhism replaced Taoism as the leading religion according to the 1990 census. Over one-third of Singaporeans profess Buddhism, and it attracts especially university-educated adherents who attend lectures and youth camps, and who utilize the Internet to study Buddhist philosophy. Likewise, urban and educated Thai have become increasingly skeptical of the Buddhism purveyed as a civil religion. New, unorthodox religious movements based on Buddhism have attracted many in the Thai middle class, and, what is more, some monks have dared to oppose openly, and at the risk of arrest, the state's development policies that destroy the environment (Taylor 1993).

Archaeology and art history reveal that the world religions were tied intimately to statecraft in the region's first states. Historical research tells us that religious imperialism was implicated in colonial expansion, and that the dawn of nationalistic movements sometimes drew energy from religious identities forged in opposition to the colonials. Modern research on the world religions in Southeast Asia, whether undertaken by those in religious studies, anthropology, or history takes seriously both the literate tradition of a faith as well as the imperative to find out what the faithful actually do and say. These hybrid methods add nuance to histories of religion, showing us, for example, how people translate religious concepts into locally meaningful forms, resisting religious and political imperialism in the process. At the same time, such hybrid approaches demand that anthropologists investigate the supposedly universal rituals of the world faiths and then place their knowledge of local practices against a more expansive background of regional history and religious literature.

Organizing Principles of Intentional Communities

Although most intentional communities have been religious (and most of those Anabaptist Protestant Christian projects), monotheistic faith is not the only organizing principle upon which utopian experiments have been built. Ownership or property, vegetarianism, ecology, and human sexuality (or celibacy) have been central principles in utopian attempts.

While some groups, such as the solitaries of Ephrata and the Shakers, chose celibacy and asceticism as a path to fulfillment, the Oneidans chose what they called ‘complex marriage.’ Founded by John Humphrey Noyes, the settlers in Oneida in upstate New York rejected monogamy. The reasoning behind this was that sexual possessiveness leads to overall lack of concern for the larger community. Members were encouraged to engage in free (heterosexual) copulation throughout the community; postmenopausal women were encouraged to teach young men about the joys of sex (particularly because these couplings were less likely to result in pregnancy) and the devout were encouraged to consort with the nondevout in hopes of encouraging greater religiosity.

Decisions about procreation were handled by committee, though unsanctioned children were provided for just as if they had been planned in accordance with the rules. Birth mothers were only responsible for the care of their offspring for the first few years of life; the community as a whole cared for and disciplined older offspring. Now known for its manufacture of Oneida silverware, the Oneida community lasted from 1848 to 1881, making it among the longest-running communes in American history.

The Amana Colonies in Iowa constitute another example of a long-running commune. Started by radical German pietists, they lasted from 1855 to 1932. Like the Moravians and Shakers, they embraced manufacturing. The Amana Corporation, manufacturer of refrigerators and household appliances, was originally started by the group.

2 The Emergence of Modern Capitalism and its Critique

The advent of early industrialization and the development of the factory system brought about unprecedented social disruption, breaking many ancestral ties: this process required both explanation and legitimation. In the locus classicus of political economy, The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith articulated a world view informed by the image of the pin factory in which virtue is equated with profit; his analysis of the rational division of labor and its necessary place in the making of profit grounded in the accumulation of surplus value of labor provided the justification for the removal of remaining constraints. The quasi-providential ‘Invisible Hand’ purportedly provided a spontaneous connection between individual wealth creation and the common good of society. Political economy attained a high status among an ascendent entrepreneurial class as it emancipated economic practice and provided the means for the elimination of embedded social, ethical, and cultural inhibitions, including those traditionally endorsed by religion in pre-industrial agrarian societies.

Marx regarded the intellectual destruction of religion by the eighteenth century Enlightenment as the axiom underpinning the true emancipation of humankind through subsequent social, political, and economic critique: there was, therefore, in principle no basis for any mutual reflective encounter between religion and economic life. Seen in full historical perspective, the theory of alienation adumbrated in the posthumously published Paris Manuscripts of 1844, the theory of society as composed of material basis and ideological superstructure in the German Ideology, the quasi-Hegelian ontology of capitalism expounded in the Grundrisse of 1857–8, the ‘fetishism of commodities’ in volume I of Das Kapital, and the later explorations in Theories of Value were all components in a theoretical scheme to which an adequate theological response has never been forthcoming. The representation of the proletariat in the Communist Manifesto as the class excluded from all classes crystallized the fears of churches already confronted with their loss of influence over a growing urban working class and its anti-clericalism.

The uprooting of agrarian workers from an ancestral status sanctioned by divine order and their regimentation into a disciplined, wage-earning working class differentiated by a new division of labor created rather a dilemma for the churches. On the one hand, the Anglican clergyman Thomas Malthus endorsed population regulation in accordance with economic needs. On the other, the living conditions of the working class were an affront to those sensitive to the historic Christian teaching on wealth and poverty. Such figures as the Scot, Thomas Chalmers, English Christian socialists, and continental religious socialists struggled to find ways to redefine the role of religion under industrialized conditions. An unchurched, brutalized proletariat also, however, represented an inner threat to the role of Christian elites, clerical and intellectual across Europe. In the English religious establishment, serious critical engagement with ‘scientific socialism,’ or, moreover, with political economy was minimal. Methodism was exceptional in that it successfully harnessed religion and industrial work in ways which, according to the Halèvy thesis, spared England a revolution.

Max Weber was fully aware of the threat which Marx's thought and Marxist socialism created for Liberal Protestant European bourgeois culture and society. According to Weber, the mentalité associated with the capitalist mode of production had historical connections and elective affinities with ‘this-worldly’ Protestant asceticism. It is therefore customary (but not undisputed) to link the nascent ‘spirit of capitalism’ with the much disputed ‘Protestant ethic,’ above all within the Reformed Christian tradition. Weber explored the affinities between the single-minded pursuit of God and an equally focused desire for profit, but he also applied his analysis to the major world religions, classically, for example, to the religion of India (D. Gellner in Roberts 1995, Chap. 1). Marx and Weber agreed on the centrality of acquisitiveness to the bourgeois mind: political economy both explained and justified the alienative emancipation of single-minded acquisitiveness from contextually embedded human needs. Weber used the Latin scholastic ascription of God as supreme good when he analyses this distinctive mind-set and hinted at its wider implications:

In fact the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs (Weber 1930/1976, p. 53).

In Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, R.H. Tawney applied Weber's insights to seventeenth-century England, and provided an indirect critique of the laissez-faire liberal capitalism which underwent economic and social crisis during the period between the First and Second World Wars. Later, further British explorations of the processual metaphor of the ‘rise’ of capitalism were extended by V.A. Demant to its ‘decline’ and its ‘persistence’ by R.H. Preston. Christian thinkers such as the Anglican William Temple relied upon the emerging Keynesian standpoint in advocating ‘middle axioms’ as the basis for socio-ethical intervention. Following the Second World War, the Keynesian program of partly state-managed mixed economy (and declining) capitalism underpinned the ideology and implementation of the ‘welfare state’ for 30 years until the ‘triumph of capitalism’ associated with the Reagan–Thatcher era. The re-assertion of neo-classical economics (Friedman 1962) and the ideology of the New Right (Green 1987) stripped away both tacit belief in the ‘hidden hand’ and all ascetic hesitance with regard to hedonism (Roberts 1992). Mainline religions in Anglo-American Western countries were split between localized variants of the ‘option for the poor’ and outright endorsement of the ‘enterprise culture.’ Those who advocated the option for the poor were depicted as naive and ill-informed practitioners of the ‘kindness that kills.’ Conversely, New Right ideologues proclaimed the virtues of greed, the adequacy of the ‘trickle down’ theory of welfare, and the necessity of a docile, ‘flexible’ labor force willing to undergo repeated social deracination.

Implications

Let’s discuss some implications of this article. On the positive side, South Korea seems to be a place that has high body awareness, leading to healthy lifestyles such as fitness and balanced nutrition. South Korea has one of the lowest obesity rates in the developed world and has avoided the obesity problems that have plagued almost all Western nations in the late twentieth century. Our model suggests that Koreans opt for healthy living because anthropometry represents embodied capital in Korea’s highly competitive job and marriage markets and because Koreans are largely influenced by the media. It has been suggested that the extraordinary low rate of obesity in postindustrialized Korea can be explained by active government intervention that has banned fast-food restaurants close to schools or fast-food commercials on TV. Previous research also suggested that the retention of traditional healthy food elements in the Korean diet as well as the continuation of Korean cooking practices have contributed to a relatively low-fat diet in Korea (Kim et al., 2001; Lee et al., 2002). We suggest that nutritional asceticism, that is, intrinsic motivation not to overeat as an investment into the future job and marriage markets, represents a major determinant of body weight in Korea. Hence, according to our model, the low prevalence of obesity in Korean society can be explained by food demand factors rather than (governmental or traditional) food supply factors alone.

On the other hand, a number of health risks have resulted from rampant body manipulation in Korean society. Although the nation has seemingly avoided the negative effects of obesity-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease and stroke, there is tentative evidence for anorexia resulting from Korea’s obsession with slimness as well as completely new health risks emerging from rampant use of appetite suppressants and growth hormone injections (whose side effects are unknown). In a similar vein, it seems that there are a number of unlicensed plastic surgeons operating due to high demand, even though such double-eyelid surgeries and nose jobs represent a certain health risk while having no medical advantage.

Perhaps the most dangerous development in Korea is that ethic discussion of corporeal ideals does not take place or is completely ignored by the masses. The recent development toward growth hormone treatment and consumption of appetite suppressants is dangerous as it is the beginning of a new form of biosocial engineering. The question then becomes: What is next on the biosocial agenda? Is it blue eyes? Is it genetic manipulation? This raises a historical discussion on eugenics and biological Darwinism, a questionable ideal that is resurfacing in Korea now.

In addition, our article found that social stress seems to have increased dramatically over the last decade. Koreans, from middle school age onward, are already concerned, if not obsessed, with their bodies. Adults in the job and marriage markets as well as those pursuing a professional career are indirectly pressured to go under the knife if they do not correspond to the corporeal ideal. As suggested, this is a matter of economic survival and of avoiding social stigmatization. As a result, it is creating a new form of biosocial stress, the extent of which does not exist anywhere else in the world.

Finally, this article supports active policy interventions in Korea to relieve social stress from the masses and break the vicious circle of biosocial manipulation. We have argued that liberalization of the media in Korea has resulted in enormous economic success and expansion of an industry that now seems to influence the masses more than anything else. Korean policy makers would be advised to encourage advertising companies, the media industry, and entertainment agencies to return to a more realistic image of media stars that reflects the Korean population rather than an exaggerated (Western) media ideal.

From a methodological point of view, this article is limited to secondary sources because of data inaccessibility issues. As a result, we have only provided a descriptive analysis of major reported survey findings, which we contextualized and explained. Future research will have to apply advanced data analysis to test for statistical significances and differences among respondents. As social survey data from governments oftentimes cannot be accessed due to privacy protection of individuals or formal issues, researchers will have to implement their own social surveys. This can be easily done by conducting random telephone interviews. This is a common and reliable sampling method in the United States when there is no underlying population data from the government or other institutions. Such a generated dataset will also allow multivariate testing of hypotheses.