Browsing by Author "Dexter, Phillip"

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    National and religious identities : an interpretation of Regis Debray's Critique of political reason
    (1997) Dexter, Phillip; Chidester, David
    This thesis is a multi-disciplinary inquiry into the nature and functioning of national identity. By interpreting a single text, The Critique of Political Reason, by the French philosopher and activist Regis Debray, a range of new analytical concepts are located and some standard concepts are recast in new terms. The religious nature of social identities, that is, the role of the sacred in society, is identified and explained. Some mainstream theories of ideology, religion, and nationalism are explored in an attempt to determine whether these tools of analysis are practicable and how these theoretical resources might be reworked in the light of Debray's analysis. As Debray shows, the national question is not a problem to be solved but a persisting dilemma to be engaged at the levels of both theory and practice.
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    Towards a political economy of the sacred: a Marxist critique of the sacred dynamics of society
    (2010) Dexter, Phillip; Chidester, David
    This thesis puts forward the argument that the efficacy of ideas that have an impact on human subjects, causing them to act or behave in particular, noticeable ways, such as religion and ideology, is a product of the process of the necessary social labour involved in the production, circulation, exchange and consumption of symbolic property. Symbolic property is itself a product of the set-apart sacred, which is a basic, primary, socially constructed category that is strategically deployed in systems for the appropriation, expropriation, ownership, control and management of all property, whether material or symbolic. Socially effective ideas are expressed symbolically, whether they are signs of material, or real objects, or of imaginary things. It is further argued that to better comprehend these systems for managing the symbolic property, a critique of the political economy of the set-apart sacred must be developed. In developing this argument a literature review was conducted, primarily of structuralist and Marxist social theory, but also of key texts in the study of religion, political economy and of social theory more generally general. In the course of this review arguments to defend this hypothesis are developed and the critique of these arguments and the theory behind them also developed. Ideology, the fetish and money, three crucial categories of the set-apart sacred, are considered in terms of their function within the political economy of the sacred. Conclusions reached include the argument that religion as a category needs to be set aside and the set-apart sacred utilized as a pivotal concept in the study of religion, politics and the economy. Historical materialism, it is also concluded, has many flaws and weaknesses; including idealism, economism and a productivist bias, that make it essential to re-think and to re-materialise the methodology. The product of this work is a unique conversation between two schools of though often thought to stand in opposition to one another, namely, Durkheimian social theory and Marxist historical materialism. In the course of this argument, a materialist definition and theory of the setapart sacred is developed and a re-materialised historical materialist methodology is also proposed. These two theoretical premises are utilised to consider how systems for managing the set-apart sacred function.