Political economy of Catholicism: The case of the sacred-market network at World Youth Day in Panama
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221077634 |
| Author | Petr Kratochvíl |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221077634
Cooperation and Conflict
2023, Vol. 58(3) 293 –314
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367221077634
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Political economy of
Catholicism: The case
of the sacred-market
network at World Youth Day
in Panama
Petr Kratochvíl
Abstract
This article explores the everyday political economy of the Catholic World Youth Day in Panama,
which was organized in January 2019. The aim is to shed more light on the relationship between
the market and the religious sphere and, in particular, on the everyday experience of the WYD
participants, and their encounters with the market and market practices. In doing so, the article
challenges several commonly held assumptions, such as the priority of religious doctrine over
everyday practices and the belief that the religious sphere is one-sidedly colonized by the market.
Instead, the article shows that in this case, the interactions between the church and the market
played out differently in three different areas – the discursive critique of the market by the
Church leaders, the Church’s incorporation of market practices in its activities and the alliance
between the local Catholic organizers and businesses. In the end, the complex interactions
between the participants, businesses, discourses, spaces and technologies gave rise to a unique
sacred-market network which blurred and at times entirely erased the difference between the
religious sphere and the market.
Keywords
Catholic Church, global Christianity, pilgrimage, political economy of religion
Introduction
‘Do you want to talk about the meaning of your life?’ and ‘Go far!’ were among the slo-
gans welcoming the participants of the Catholic World Youth Day (WYD) to one of its
venues in Panama City. Although the two overlapping signs seemed to complement each
other, the provenance of each was starkly different. While the first was meant to be an
invitation to a private conversation with a Catholic priest, the second was a Nike adver-
tisement which was hanging next to the confession invitation. This peculiar mixture of
Corresponding author:
Petr Kratochvíl, Institute of International Relations Prague, 118 50 Praha, Czech Republic.
Email: kratochvil@iir.cz
1077634CAC0010.1177/00108367221077634Cooperation and ConflictKratochvíl
research-article2022
Article
294 Cooperation and Conflict 58(3)
religious and market elements constituted an omnipresent feature of the WYD. The pil-
grims gathered for prayer in the shopping malls, restaurants served special pilgrims’
menus and the electric appliance store next to my hotel continuously played meditative
Taizé chants from its for-sale loudspeakers. On TV, loud arguments in the local version
of Big Brother were regularly interrupted by WYD advertisements and calls for prayer.
In short, the multiple encounters between the market and the religious were impossible
to miss during the WYD.
The aim of this article is to shed more light on the everyday political economy of the
WYD, on the multiple interactions between the religious and the market. I am not pri-
marily concerned with a macro analysis of the financing of the mega event and the socio-
economic impact the WYD had on Panama and Panama City.1 Instead, my aim is to
explore the everyday experience of the participants and their daily encounters with and
appropriation of the market and market practices. It would be easy to juxtapose these
practices with Pope Francis’ sharp critique of capitalism and argue that either the papal
discourse or the participants’ experience is the true expression of the orthodox position.
Instead, my research shows that the complex whole that emerged at the WYD is neither
a rejection of the market nor a one-sided colonization of the WYD by the market. In fact,
the interactions between the church and the market played out differently in three differ-
ent areas – the discursive critique of the market by the Church leaders, the Church’s
incorporation of market practices in its activities, and the alliance between the local
Catholic organizers and businesses. The lived experience of the participants then reflected
these three dimensions in various ways, rejecting, neutralizing or embracing them. The
emergence of the sacred-market network is thus a result of a complex process of transla-
tion through which the ‘original’ positions of both the Church and the market were trans-
formed but also, simultaneously, betrayed.2
The aim of the article is to make two scholarly contributions. First, and most impor-
tantly, it wants to shed new light on the relationship between the market and the reli-
gious. Multiple studies have shown how the market dominates other spheres, including
the religious one (most recently, the comprehensive monograph by McCarraher, 2019).
The argument of this article is different as it shows that the market logic and the religious
logic might not be as opposed as is often believed (Logan, 2017). From the point of view
of the everyday religious practices, the two logics are often neither contradictory nor
exclusive. In fact, in the case I studied, the two logics ceased to be identified as inde-
pendent, distinguishable forces.
The article also brings new insight into the debates about the political economy of
Catholicism, and, more broadly, the political economy of religion. It has been common-
place to focus on ideas and doctrines and derive the political economy of a particular
religious tradition therefrom. Similarly, a common assumption is that to identify the most
decisive factors, research should proceed in a top-down manner, starting with the sacred
texts and the most relevant religious authorities.3 This article is formally structured in the
same manner, but in the end, it tries to show that the discourses of the most relevant
religious authorities can be successfully neutralized by the practices of the believers’
everyday political economy (Hobson and Seabrooke 2007), hence reversing the entire
pyramidal logic of the political economy of religion.
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