2. Religious Fundamentalism and the Neoliberal Turn

The book takes as its starting point that there are different types of economic globalization and that the neoliberal version is a result of the contradictions within the interventionist type of globalization which was prevalent from the 1930s to the 1970s. The crisis of the interventionist form of globalization presented itself also as a crisis of the secular settlement and was used by counter-hegemonic elites who often relied on religious “frames” to gain power. It is this context that explains why much of the religious resurgence was a reactionary right-wing form of religious resurgence. Neoliberal globalization is thus not only a reflection of market but also of religious business fundamentalism whose key objective was to dismantle the overbearing state. The neo-Gramscian interpretation of religion which finds its parallel in the cultural approach in religious studies and the constructivist approach in International Relations theory classifies this as a specific type of religious activism here labeled as fundamentalist or reactionary conservative. The approach however also leads us to expect that there are more progressive religious activists on the front lines of the resistance to neoliberal globalization. Hence, Religions in the International Political Economy is ground-breaking in that it points to the multifaceted way religious activism is imbricated in the facilitation and contestation of neoliberal capitalism and in its development of a typology of religious activism.