Sacred Consumption

This book explores the quasi-religious nature of consumerism and how American Christianity interacts with consumerism. The author uses mixed methods to unpack the nexus between the Christian faith and consumption and how habitual discretionary consumption functions as a pseudo-faith in America.

Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptural works, as well as indigenous and Spanish sixteenth-century texts, were filled with images of foodstuffs and food processing and consumption. Both gods and humans were depicted feasting, and food and eating clearly played a pervasive, integral role in Aztec rituals. Basic foods were transformed into sacred elements within particular rituals, while food in turn gave meaning to the ritual performance. This pioneering book offers the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Elizabeth Morán asserts that while feasting and consumption are often seen as a secondary aspect of ritual performance, a close examination of images of food rites in Aztec ceremonies demonstrates that the presence—or, in some cases, the absence—of food in the rituals gave them significance. She traces the ritual use of food from the beginning of Aztec mythic history through contact with Europeans, demonstrating how food and ritual activity, the everyday and the sacred, blended in ceremonies that ranged from observances of births, marriages, and deaths to sacrificial offerings of human hearts and blood to feed the gods and maintain the cosmic order. Morán also briefly considers continuities in the use of pre-Hispanic foods in the daily life and ritual practices of contemporary Mexico. Bringing together two domains that have previously been studied in isolation, Sacred Consumption promises to be a foundational work in Mesoamerican studies.

Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptural works, as well as indigenous and Spanish sixteenth-century texts, were filled with images of foodstuffs and food processing and consumption. Both gods and humans were depicted feasting, and food and eating clearly played a pervasive, integral role in Aztec rituals. Basic foods were transformed into sacred elements within particular rituals, while food in turn gave meaning to the ritual performance. This pioneering book offers the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Elizabeth Morán asserts that while feasting and consumption are often seen as a secondary aspect of ritual performance, a close examination of images of food rites in Aztec ceremonies demonstrates that the presence—or, in some cases, the absence—of food in the rituals gave them significance. She traces the ritual use of food from the beginning of Aztec mythic history through contact with Europeans, demonstrating how food and ritual activity, the everyday and the sacred, blended in ceremonies that ranged from observances of births, marriages, and deaths to sacrificial offerings of human hearts and blood to feed the gods and maintain the cosmic order. Morán also briefly considers continuities in the use of pre-Hispanic foods in the daily life and ritual practices of contemporary Mexico. Bringing together two domains that have previously been studied in isolation, Sacred Consumption promises to be a foundational work in Mesoamerican studies.

This book sheds light on the consumption of spiritual products, services, experiences, and places through state-of-the-art studies by leading and emerging scholars in interpretive consumer research, marketing, sociology, anthropology, cultural, and religious studies. The collection brings together fresh views and scholarship on a cultural tension that is at the centre of the lives of countless individuals living in postmodern societies: the relationship between the material and the spiritual, the sacred and the profane. The book examines how a variety of agents – religious institutions, spiritual leaders, marketers and consumers – interact and co-create spiritual meanings in a post-disenchanted society that has been defined as a ‘supermarket of the soul.’ Consumption and Spirituality examines not only religious organizations, but also brands and marketers and the way they infuse their products, services and experiences with spiritual meanings that flow freely in the circuit of culture and can be appropriated by consumers even without purchase acts. From a consumer perspective, the book investigates how spiritual beliefs, practices, and experiences are now embedded into a global consumer culture. Rather than condemning consumption, the chapters in this book highlight consumers’ agency and the creative processes through which authentic spiritual meanings are co-created from a variety of sources, local and global, and sacred and profane alike.

The identification and positioning of sacred space within contemporary contexts has, to date, received scant attention. In reflecting upon a broad spectrum of conceptions of what constitutes sacred space, this collection of interdisciplinary essays presents a new perspective on an area that is developing into an important theological and philosophical concept.

In this study, the authors draw from branches of psychology, decision theory, sociology and cultural anthropology to present a diverse selection of critical perspectives on consumer motivation.