Abstract
While the consumption of cultural products has for long been recognised as a marker of social status, cultural consumption constitutes only one possible type of high status signal. Ethical preferences and religiously inspired behaviour can be important sources of prestige. The present article focuses on the Catholic tradition of the education of the will and the exercise of religious virtues as part of an aristocratic ideal amongst Chile’s business elite. The interpretation provided, however, does not equate religious preferences to strategic behaviour. Contrary to Bourdieu’s work on distinction and to the analyses produced by sociologists who apply his conceptual apparatus to the study of religion, the author argues that the religiously inspired ideals of self-discipline and ethical action cannot be understood fully if they are seen as guided by interests. The author’s analysis takes seriously the idea that individuals may pursue religious aims because they value them in themselves and have true commitments to religious norms.
Beyond cultural consumption: ethics and distinction
Historical accounts of Chile’s elites have highlighted their members’ early attempts to gain social prestige via the acquisition of titles and legal privileges as well as through kinship networks (Barbier, 1972; Lowenthal-Felstiner, 1976; Vicuña, 1996), while sociological analyses of the elites’ mentality and behaviour have focused on conspicuous consumption, manners and taste as powerful status signals (Barros and Vergara, 1978). As legal entitlements were eliminated during the 19th century, the lifestyle elements of prestige acquired greater relevance (Turner, 1988). Elegance codes, which sanction various practices and acts of consumption, from dress and home decoration to speech and deportment, have operated until the present. While the consumption of cultural products has for long been recognised as a marker of social status (DiMaggio and Useem, 1978, 1982; Gans, 1973; Veblen, 2001; Weber, 1991) cultural consumption constitutes only one possible type of high status signal. As Lamont (1994) has demonstrated in her research of elites in France and the USA, ethical dispositions may be as relevant as taste in establishing social boundaries. Ethical preferences and religiously inspired behaviour can be important sources of prestige. The present article focuses on the role played by a sense of moral worth in establishing social differences amongst Chile’s economic elite. In particular, the Catholic tradition of the education of the will and the exercise of religious virtues are discussed as part of an aristocratic ideal. The interpretation provided, however, does not equate religious preferences to strategic behaviour. Contrary to Bourdieu’s work on distinction and to the analyses produced by sociologists who apply the concepts of field and capital to the study of religion, the argument is made that the religiously inspired ideals of self-control and ethical action cannot be understood fully if they are seen as the result of instrumental behaviour inspired by interests. The analysis takes seriously the idea that individuals may pursue religious aims because they value them in themselves and have acquired true commitments to religious norms.
The analysis is based on first-hand ethnographic research into the religious practices and beliefs of Chile’s economic elite. 1 The research shows that for the Catholic majority among the economic elite, religion plays a key role in marking members’ identity and informing their preferences in matters of work, the education of their children, and their views about the way the economy should be run. Distinctions in these and other areas are linked to the exercise of different types of Catholicism. For example, there are variations between the preferences of those who adhere to the more liberal or progressive style of the Jesuits on one hand, and the conservative movements Opus Dei 2 and the Legionaries of Christ 3 on the other, in regard to issues such as divorce and social justice. The differences within the elite run alongside one peculiar feature of elite members’ self-understanding, which, from their perspective, sets them apart from the rest of society: the formation of character. Part of a Catholic training, the education of the will is represented as an essential component of the elite’s social status.
An evident objection to the idea that Catholic virtue might serve as a status signal is that Chile on the whole is a Catholic country and, therefore, Catholicism makes an unlikely exclusive practice. This would hold if the practice of Catholicism was homogeneous, but it is far from that. Upper-class Catholics attend mass more frequently than any other social group, and they are more assiduous in the practice of confession. The same applies to prayer (Lehmann, 2002; ISUC, 2001). There are also certain practices which over the past 30 years or so have become a sort of trademark behaviour for the upper class, and which are pervasive among the economic elite: taking communion directly in the mouth, saying the rosary in the car, and celebrating Mary’s month at home. There has simultaneously been an increase in the importance that elite men attach to attendance at mass with their families at weekends (Thumala Olave, 2007). More important in this context is the fact that the formation of character is highly valued within the upper class and its outcomes may serve as a form of differentiation between elite groups.
The discussion is organised in the following way. The next section presents some of the narratives found in the interviews with elite members and in secondary material regarding Catholic virtues and the formation of character. The third section considers the link established in the narratives between virtue and social status and examines the extent to which religious behaviour and beliefs can be usefully understood as a source of distinction, in the sense of Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of religion as symbolic capital. The conclusions highlight the need to consider the exercise of virtue as part of a symbolic hierarchy that is not equivalent to or dependent upon the economic field.
Willpower and religious duty
One of the key themes that emerges in interviews with members of the economic elite interviewed for this research is the value of the education of the will, self-control and discipline. Perhaps the most frequently mentioned qualities of character amongst elite members are ‘severity’ and ‘willpower’, qualities that apply to every aspect of life, from the relationship with the family to the organisation of time and performance at work. One interviewee avers that the members of the business elite are ‘very strict with themselves and with their peers’ and another claims that failure awaits ‘whoever crosses the line [between desirable and undesirable behaviour]’. According to the interviewees’ accounts, a strict moral framework determines that a senior executive is expected to be honest and hard-working and to lead a decorous family life.
This framework also determines the way he should look. The executive just quoted explains that the tight grip on the elite members’ behaviour extends to their wardrobe ‘with small, minor, exceptions in the advertising agencies[, where] there is more freedom and the executive can dress as he likes, or just about’. Proof of this is the notoriety that Chilean executives acquired in Latin American commercial circles during the 1980s for their ‘grey-suited’ appearance and ‘serious’ looks and demeanour – a stark contrast to the more colourful and informal outfits and demeanour of their colleagues in other Latin American countries. A standardised, but elegant, physical appearance serves, it would seem, as an external aid in the daily task of self-control, very much as the monk’s habit, allegedly, keeps vanity or sensuality at bay. The men of the economic elite are, according to the accounts, ‘morally and spiritually strong’ and are therefore able to ‘accomplish their duty’ in the face of the obstacles posed by personal inclinations or desires. This means, as will be shown shortly, that they are able to overcome the temptations of laziness, mediocrity and negligence at work, as well as fulfil the duties of family life in the face of conflict and the desire for leisure or personal entertainment. That there are variations in the capacity of individuals to live up to these expectations means that prestige and admiration are attached to success in the exercise of virtue.
The attribute of moral strength that is held in high regard by elite members has its antecedents in the tradition of the education of the will, in which several interviewees were trained as schoolboys. 4 The emphasis on character formation owes much to the European bourgeois ideal of the perfection of the self and of self-exploration, originating with the Augustinian discipline of self-examination that informs Puritanism and Jesuit education (Taylor, 2002). In the Catholic strand of this tradition the transformation of the will results from constant scrutiny of the soul, the exercise of self-control, and the Grace of God.
The best example of this type of education in Chile is that imparted by the Jesuits since their arrival at the end of the 16th century (Hanisch, 1974). In accordance with the apostolic motive ‘to help conduct men to salvation’ (Donohue, 1963), the objective of Jesuit instruction was moral in that it sought to transform the youth’s natural character to make it follow predetermined ends, such as the leading of a Christian life. The methods used by the Jesuits emphasised authority and effort (constant activity) although they aimed at a reasoned internalisation of objectives (Payot, 1909). Control of the body was as important as the taming of emotions and it extended beyond the Jesuit schools to include elite education more generally. In the case of elite girls, for example, 19th-century respectability and propriety demanded that they ‘repressed their natural movements to produce other, more studied and fine ones’ (Vicuña, 2001: 40). More recent versions of the Society of Jesus’s educational objectives continue to include ‘personal development through the training of character and will’ (International Commission on the Apostolate of Jesuit Education, 1986: para. 52) so that ‘self-discipline’, ‘perseverance’ and ‘rigour’ remain of the utmost importance.
Since the 1960s, however, the Jesuits have lost popularity among the conservative sections of the economic elite – partly due to their support for structural reform and social justice issues – and the formation of character has been entrusted to a very different group of educators (Thumala, 2010). The conservative religious movements Opus Dei and the Legionaries of Christ are now amongst the most popular educators of the will. 5 If nothing else, these movements share with the Jesuits an emphasis on self-discipline and self-control. The result of this type of education is described by elite members, as will be shown below, as moral strength and character.
Two main characteristics of Opus Dei’s spirituality must be highlighted. The first is the notion of sanctification through work, which means that lay members of the Church can aspire to saintliness by doing their duty in their professions (Illanes, 1994; Ocáriz, 1994). Since members pledge to seek personal Christian perfection and strive to implement Christian ideals in their chosen occupations, ‘material work itself must be turned into prayer and holiness’ (Illanes, 1994: 8). This is possible because work is considered part of the supernatural sphere inasmuch as it continues God’s creation of the world (Illanes, 1994). Work is both an act of worship and a means to self-perfection. The second element to bear in mind is that the formation of character is achieved through mechanisms such as adherence to a ‘life plan’. The life plan consists of daily prayers and mass, frequent confession and fluent communication with a spiritual counsellor. It also includes a monthly ‘day of recollection’ for personal prayer and reflection, and a yearly retreat. The outcome of these instances of recollection is not only worship, but also the establishment of a set of goals or resolutions whose accomplishment the person monitors throughout the year.
Opus Dei and the Legionaries of Christ differ in their production of a set of formal guiding principles for behaviour and a distinctive spirituality. Opus Dei has developed a set of prescriptions that aim to guide members’ lives, originating in the founders’ writings and in subsequent developments by movement theologians. These prescriptions and ideals are systematically transmitted to members through formal training and informal exchanges. By comparison, the distinctiveness of the Legionaries of Christ’s charisma seems to be less clear. The movement’s official description of its spirituality does not differ greatly from widely accepted Catholic ideals and behaviour such as love for Christ, charity and apostolic work. For example, members of the movement seek to ‘maintain an authentic Christian life’ by living out their ‘commitments of daily prayer, regular spiritual direction, frequent reception of the sacraments, weekly Gospel reflections, and a team review of their apostolic activity’ (Legionaries of Christ, 2007). In spite of their differences, the two movements share an individualistic approach to religious practice (as opposed to the socially minded approach of the Jesuits; see Thumala Olave, 2010) and a concern with self-discipline and the formation of character. In both cases the accounts of the movements’ members are clearly concerned with self-control, perseverance and moral strength in their attempts to obey divine law. The notions of self-control and duty are, nonetheless, compelling beyond membership to Opus Dei or the Legionaries of Christ: they emerge as ideals in the narratives of other members of the business elite who do not belong to any religious organisation. 6
Virtue at work
A clear example of the way the principles of discipline and self-denial are brought to bear on the relationship that Opus Dei members have with work is found in a speech by Opus Dei CEO Mauricio Larraín, of the Spanish banking corporation Santander, entitled ‘The sin of sloth and the company’. 7 Larraín’s advice will seem familiar to English-speaking readers because it gives the impression that it has been extracted from the work of the Scot Samuel Smiles (1812–1904), whose books epitomised Victorian values (Smiles, 1871, 1875, 1880). Yet, Larraín’s suggestions are a renewed version of the traditional educational ideal of self-culture, or character building, initiated in Chile by the Jesuits and revamped by Opus Dei.
According to Larraín, there are ways to strengthen the character in case the task of following one’s duty appears too difficult. The first exercise recommended by Larraín to fight idleness at work is to
get ourselves to do things even if we do not feel like doing them, knowing that it is our obligation. Then carry out other difficult tasks because we know they are good for us. After that, take on activities that do not appeal to us because that is the way to become men of integrity. Finally, deny ourselves that small treat to train ourselves in the art of self-control. (1997: 169)
Just as the Jesuits stressed the need for perseverance and the creation of daily habits, Larraín then highlights the importance of ‘small’ conquests. In his view, attention to detail or to ‘small things’ is the basis for the training of the self. This
must never be underestimated, even if it seems superfluous: [one should] watch the schedule, be organised about the things that one is in charge of, plan the things that must be done, take care of the details in the relationship with others, use time well, and accept the troubles of the day. A man capable of behaving that way builds around him a sort of walled fortress, becomes a tenacious, stern, solid, compact [sic] man, very difficult to tumble. Those qualities characterise persons of distinction who, one day, will be in control of their character and will achieve the peaks they dreamt of. Whoever has willpower, if he perseveres, can make his dreams come true. (1997: 169)
The dreams of which Larraín is speaking are not simply worldly achievements and are not conceived as ends in themselves. As was mentioned above, professional excellence and success are understood by Opus Dei as the main path to salvation.
Personal discipline involves not only the rational use of time but also control of the body. Larraín recommends following the rule known as the ‘heroic moment’: stick to the wake-up time you set the night before. ‘If the previous day you decided to get up at 7 and when the alarm goes off you change your mind, then you have started the day with a defeat.’ The strengthening of willpower is done through small victories. Failure to get up on time leaves the person less able to win greater, more important, battles during the day. ‘We all must have a time for getting up’ he avers, ‘and stick to it, so that we start the day in an orderly fashion’.
A related piece of advice is to be punctual and organised throughout the day. Larraín comments that
It has always caught my attention when looking at the lives of the presidents, […] or the great CEO of a company, or the lives of the presidents of the companies we work for, how they manage their time. The busier they are, the more responsibilities they have, the better organised they are. (1997: 170)
In addition, the guidelines proposed by Larraín suggest: ‘Do not avoid unpleasant work, but rather, get it out of the way first thing’ (Larraín, 1997). Finally, not only personal willpower but also that of the work team must be enhanced, a command that springs from the duty of Opus Dei members to improve the life of the people around them through their example and personal conversations about ‘Christian values’, as well as identifying potential members and sympathisers for the movement.
The similarity between Larraín’s advice and some of the values proper to a bourgeois ethic, such as the rational use of time and organisation of work or the emphasis on self-formation, is limited by the fact that these values are intermingled, in the accounts of elite members, with aristocratic notions of the inter-generational transmission of essential family traits. The tension between nature and culture that this reflects will be discussed shortly in connection with practices of distinction. The remaining part of this section deals with the way in which elite members apply the effects of their moral education to their family lives.
Family duties
Just as excellence at work requires a conscious command of the self, the realm of family life constitutes a challenging space for the exercise of respect for the divine order. This emerges with particular clarity in the accounts of elite members for this research. The accomplishment of duty requires the exercise of willpower because, on many occasions, obedience implies a sacrifice of the self’s natural dispositions to sin. In the participants’ accounts, the type of family consecrated by the Catholic Church – man and woman united in matrimony and their children – allows individuals to develop their full humanity, among other things, through the fulfilment of the duties proper to each role. A strong will is necessary here. As one executive explains, ‘respect for the natural order, the divine order of the family’ is beneficial because it ‘brings well-being and peace in life. And peace is much more important than joy.’
The clarification is significant because of the frequent conflicts that occur within families, such as between spouses or between parents and children. The ability to put off the experience of joy in order to achieve peace depends on self-control. According to the narratives, the satisfaction of desires and emotional gratification must be subordinated to the respect of ethical and religious principles. In the words of one executive, the sense of duty of the elite manifests itself in the fact that ‘you got married, married badly, but remained married. Many of our parents lived like that’ and their children are attempting to follow their example. For some, belonging to the elite brings with it the duty to respect the sacrament of matrimony independently of personal happiness. In the long run, the sacrifices made in the accomplishment of duty deliver happiness ‘of a different order’ or ‘true happiness’. 8 The benefits of self-denial are also evident in the task of raising children, which in the words of one interviewee involves ‘hundreds of sacrifices’ in terms of personal rest and leisure. In order to teach his daughter the value of work he remains in the city at weekends instead of going to the coast so that she can do a weekend job. ‘Staying in the city during the holidays is awful … but if I stay it is going to make me happy and will be fantastic for the kids.’
The constant overcoming of personal desire emerges as both an ideal and an accomplishment. However, commitment to religious norms does not only imply privation but also provides access to God’s spiritual aid and assistance in leading a rewarding life. One interviewee describes the significance of the sacrament of matrimony thus:
… those who do not marry in the Church start off with a disadvantage. When someone decides for religious matrimony and really believes it is for life, it’s like you have a partner that is God. Married life is not easy … If one doesn’t have that support, then it is going to be harder to have a happy married life.
In contrast to this type of principled behaviour some interviewees quote the examples of colleagues in the country and abroad who do not follow Catholic ethical principles. As one manager explains, ‘in this company we have Spanish [female] executives who do not want to have children and one thinks, “What a lack of hope! How atrocious!” ’ In this view, the option of not raising a family deprives individuals, among other things, of the chance to observe divine law in daily life. In the words of another interviewee:
being faithful [to divine law] is hard but it is evidently good for you … religious people tend to be happier than non-religious people because they are following something that is natural.
In sum, the exercise of religious virtue at work and in the family is described as an arduous task which involves self-control and religious virtue. In this context, the education of the will provided by religious schools and the family and assisted by religious movements emerges as an essential aid in leading a fully Christian life. The role of parents, especially of a ‘very religious’ or ‘extremely devout’ mother and a ‘demanding’ and ‘exemplary’ father, combines in the narratives with a ‘strict’ and ‘character-building’ moral and religious education in Catholic schools. Interviewees are intent on ensuring that the next generation should experience a similar upbringing in ‘Catholic values’ and the ‘right doctrine’ through the traditional religious schools run by congregations as well as the now popular schools run by Opus Dei and the Legionaries of Christ.
While the emphasis on education is a typically bourgeois value, the self-understanding of the Catholic members of Chile’s business elite also includes an aristocratic tendency to naturalise their moral qualities. 9 The following section addresses the tension between these two sources of prestige (education and lineage, culture and nature). Given that this appears to correspond to what Bourdieu understands as practices of distinction, that ‘transfigured, misrecognizable, legitimate form of social class [which] only exists through the struggles for the exclusive appropriation of the distinctive signs which make “natural distinction”’ (Bourdieu, 2002: 250), the next section deals with the concepts of distinction, religious capital and religious field and displays the serious difficulties posed by observing this elite’s religious and ethical ideals using Bourdieu’s theoretical framework.
Virtue and social status
It is possible to argue that the exercise of the virtues discussed above signals social status for two, apparently contradictory, reasons. The first is the acknowledgement that the ability to behave according to certain norms is not common or easy to achieve. Since they must be inculcated in a certain type of family and school, these virtues are usually accessible only to the elite. According to the narrative, only those with the best education are able to follow the strict commands of morality and religion. At the same time, interviewees refer to the importance of family tradition or ‘family lineage’ to imply that certain capacities and qualities are innate or handed down genetically and therefore do not depend on a process of formal education.
The combination of bourgeois and aristocratic approaches to the issue of individual moral quality is evident in the claim of one interviewee, who explains there are behaviours ‘proper to every class and group’ marked by experiences such as ‘studying in a certain university, going to a particular school and belonging to a certain group of families’. The upper class has a ‘very marked sense of duty’ because it cultivates it and because it can draw from its tradition the exemplary behaviour required to socialise the young. While the bourgeois ideal of the formation of character is achieved through family and school, the aristocratic sense of embodying virtue is automatically acquired by being born into a certain family. In some cases, the sense of personal worth is intimately linked to the familial contribution to society. The work of Italian historian Maria Rosaria Stabili (2003) on Chilean traditional families highlights this by quoting interviewees who pride themselves on their families’ work for the common good of the country (as politicians, professionals or artists), actions which render them a true ‘nobility’ recognised by society; hence the importance of genealogy.
In comparison with the discourse of the members of traditional families interviewed by Stabili (2003), who give great importance to lineage, the accounts found in this research regarding personal success are more meritocratic. And yet, stories of personal effort always include acknowledgment of the family of origin and the opportunities provided by them, which are not under individual control. For example, the CEO of an important Chilean bank explains his current status in the following way:
… if I had not received that [good quality] education, I probably wouldn’t have had a fraction of the opportunities I had; but those were only mine, and I could have lost those opportunities had I not embraced them … I’m the son of an immigrant … and I am where I am thanks to my education, not because I was the son of a family [sic] … in sum, it is the result of my education, personal effort, luck and faith.
Another interviewee, who does belong to a traditional, ‘well known’ family, also speaks about his social status in terms that combine education, opportunities and personal effort but is adamant that his moral quality is connected to the religious lineage of his family of origin. A highly successful entrepreneur, this Opus Dei member refers to the presence of a saint amongst his ancestors to illustrate how deeply held Catholic religious values are in his family today. 10
When the qualities associated with social status are presented as natural or inherited, then the condition of elite appears to be independent of individual control. It is a common belief among upper-class Chileans that ‘class cannot be bought’ but, rather, is acquired by birth – an idea that, most probably, emerged at the same time as the use of the pejorative term siútico (parvenu) to refer to the new rich (Barros and Vergara, 1978). And yet, in Chile, as in other societies, the elite constantly incorporate new individuals on account of their economic success. That the social consequences of the education of the will are represented as the result of a rare combination of nature and culture, inheritance and personal effort, lineage and education, places Chile’s economic elite alongside other social groups that are uneasy about the contingency of their social position. Furthermore, it could be argued that religious practice, and in particular the education of the will and its consequences for ethical behaviour, are nothing more than a mechanism for social distinction and the reproduction of social inequality; a ‘justificatory ideology which enables the privileged classes, the main users of the educational system, to see their success as the confirmation of natural, personal gifts’ (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1979: 71).
However, the tension between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ – the tendency to naturalise what is in reality the result of education and personal effort while at the same time drawing attention to the family lineage – can have as much to do with the need for self-justification as with a strategic competition for power. Furthermore, self-justification does not necessarily go together with or presuppose instrumental behaviour guided by interest. The search for self-justification can have a genuinely religious dimension. In order to develop this argument, some of Bourdieu’s concepts, adopted critically by some sociologists of religion (Dianteill, 2003; Rey, 2004; Swartz, 1996; Verter, 2003), must be dealt with. Four concepts will be addressed in turn.
The first is the idea that the need for self-justification is fundamentally a matter of legitimating social positions of privilege or power. Weber’s claim that classes with high social and economic privilege ‘assign to religion the primary function of legitimizing their own life pattern and situation in the world’ (Weber, 1993: 107) and the Marxian notion that religion is equivalent to false consciousness are taken up by Bourdieu when he argues that ‘religion has social functions in so far as the laity expects justification of their existence as occupants of a particular position in the social structure’ (Bourdieu, 1987: 124). In Rey’s interpretation and application of this to the case of Haiti, ‘elite religiosity … promotes false consciousness or … misrecognition in the masses by creating the illusion that elites are religious and therefore moral and thus deserving of their power’ (Rey, 2004: 334). This understanding of religious action as ideological ignores Weber’s other arguments regarding the ‘psychological need for reassurance as to the legitimacy or deservedness of one’s happiness’ (Weber, 1993: 107) and that rationalised religions such as Christianity aim to respond to the ‘metaphysical needs of the human mind as it is driven to reflect on ethical and religious questions, driven not by material need but by an inner compulsion to understand the world as a meaningful cosmos and to take up a position towards it’ (Weber, 1978: 499). 11
In line with this recognition of the intellectual and expressive dimension of actors’ relationship to religion, the notion of self-justification is taken here to mean much more than the legitimisation of privilege and to include the need for religious and moral certainties. These certainties feed on various sources. They may spring from recognition by peers of the worth of an individual, from the personal assessment of the extent to which behaviour is in tune with religious teachings, or from an intimate feeling that the individual’s life accords with what she conceives to be the divinity’s demands or expectations. The accounts provided by elite members regarding their family tradition of religious practice show that the sense of sharing with previous generations certain qualities of being may reduce the anxiety that autonomy and responsibility generate. The self-confidence and familiarity which Bourdieu (2002) describes so well regarding upper-class consumption of art has its equivalent in the realm of morality and religious worth. The notion of aristocratic heritage may lessen the ‘nausea’ which Sartre associated with a sense of total responsibility for the outcome of individual actions. The confidence imbued in a ‘family tradition’ contributes to the certitude that the person has ‘what it takes’ to lead a moral life and to engage in actions that are conducive to happiness in this life and to salvation in the next. 12 But to recognise this requires granting religious beliefs and moral commitments an autonomy they do not have in Bourdieu’s theoretical framework.
Bourdieu goes further than simply recognising ‘social functions’ in religion. By conceiving of it as exchanges in a field he in effect reduces religious action to the pursuit of interest. The properly religious interest – sought after in the struggle within the religious field – is defined ‘as the legitimizing expression of a social position’ (Bourdieu, 1971: 311–312). The dominance of interest, of course, is not just true for the religious field. According to Bourdieu ‘there is no action without a raison d’etre, i.e. without interest, or to put it another way, without investment in a game’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 290). When combined with the notion that all action is strategic, the result is that genuine religious behaviour becomes impossible. According to Bourdieu, ‘practice never ceases to conform to economic calculations even when it gives the appearance of disinterestedness by departing from the logic of interested calculation and playing for stakes that are non-material and not easily quantified’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 177). As a consequence, altruism, for example, emerges as ‘the most clever disguise that calculating egoism can take’ (Alexander, 1995: 151). As Alexander argues, ‘we are in Alice’s Wonderland, a topsy-turvy world where altruism is egoism and egoism must give the appearance of altruism in turn. In this world, action is instrumental by definition’ (Alexander, 1995: 151). In the case of Chile’s elite, this means that the aim of leading a Christian life and the belief in the good that comes from the exercise of religious virtues is nothing but an attempt at legitimizing the elite’s social status; Chile’s elite’s religious ideals are means to the end of social improvement. This conception of religious action faces three main difficulties; the first is logical, the second theoretical and the third empirical.
The logical difficulty that an understanding of action as instrumental entails for the study of behaviour inspired by religious norms is that, as Alexander has pointed out, norms ‘can bind action only on nonrational, subjective, and nonindividual grounds … Norms which are merely objects of calculation can only be the norms of others, not of the actor herself’ (Alexander, 1995: 155). This is crucial, because ‘norms create order only when they bind action via internal commitments, in relation to which an exclusively rational calculation is impossible’ (1995: 155). Religious action cannot be divorced from internal commitments and beliefs if it is to remain anything but instrumental manipulation. This is true even if the process of the formation of character and the values socialised via religious education are understood as habitus, the ‘durable, transposable dispositions’ that shape the perception and appreciation of experience (Bourdieu, 1977). Inasmuch as the notion of habitus refers to a set of normative standards of evaluation, it cannot involve rational calculation. As Alexander has argued, the notion of an ‘unconscious strategy’ is oxymoronic because, from the point of view of the actor, ‘the same action cannot be completely rational and nonrational at the same time’ (Alexander, 1995: 154).
The theoretical problem is that in a symbolic economy characterised by the struggle for domination, religion is a form of capital. Whether in Bourdieu’s formulation of ‘religious capital’ as religious symbolic systems and religious competencies (used by religious professionals to impose their view of the sacred upon the laity within a hierocratic institutional framework) (Bourdieu, 1971) or in Verter’s later elaboration of the concept as ‘spiritual capital’ (Verter, 2003) –’a more widely diffused commodity, governed by more complex patterns of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption’ (Verter, 2003: 158) – religious belief and activity are reduced to the possession of assets or the struggle for the accumulation of scarce symbolic goods. The problem does not lie in the perfectibility of the definition of capital. In fact, the difficulty persists even if we leave aside the fact that religious capital is not like other forms of economic capital because it is not universally recognised (Verter, 2003: 170) or that religious goods can be seen as scarce only by stretching the argument, since religious values do not ‘run out’ in the way material goods do (on the contrary, from a religious point of view, the more values and virtues such as charity and love for others are practised and shared, the more good is produced). Even when we ignore these issues, it is still the case that the notion of religious capital or spiritual capital conceives religion as a means. The instrumental understanding of action that is proper to Bourdieu’s approach ignores that most religious beliefs are ends and thus valued in themselves. The ‘strictly religious interest’ is not, as Bourdieu sees it, a means for the legitimisation of social status but the end of salvation, communion with the divine or transcendence. 13
Finally, a Bourdieusian conception of religious action that is incapable of recognising its non-strategic elements is not only theoretically problematic but also empirically limited. Bourdieu argues that virtue is ‘a price to be paid’ by those who have no other forms of capital at their disposal. This means that ‘where other people can give real guarantees, money, culture or connections’, those who have only virtue strive towards their ambitions ‘by paying in sacrifices, privations, renunciations, goodwill, recognition, in short, virtue’ (Bourdieu, 2002: 333). Morality emerges as the exclusive concern of those upwardly or socially mobile and has no intrinsic value. In contrast, Lamont has shown for the case of American business managers that respect of moral obligations ‘particularly vis-à-vis one’s family and friends, is often valued as a goal in itself’ and that ‘high moral status is a crucial resource that is valued in and of itself’ (Lamont, 1994: 184). Furthermore, she found no connection between her interviewees’ ‘mobility and their tendency to practice moral exclusion’ (1992: 185).
Similarly, the high esteem in which the training in and the exercise of virtue is held amongst Chile’s economic elite cannot be divorced from a religious outlook that transcends individuals’ social position. The interviewees for this research already belong to the elite and need not adhere to demanding forms of religiosity to access economic opportunities. Admittedly, those in a process of upward social mobility find that certain forms of Catholicism are a distinctive trait of a large part of Santiago’s upper class and tend, in some cases, to adopt the norms of the group they have joined through marriage, for example (Thumala Olave, 2007), but the existence of successful agnostics and atheists as well as members of other religions, notably Jews, amongst the economic elite demonstrates that the logic guiding business relations is economic and not religious. As one interviewee puts it, ‘no one will do a bad deal just because the other guy belongs to your religious group. Business is business’. Moreover, religious belonging is no guarantee of social inclusion. This is particularly evident in the case of the failure by one prominent businessmen of Arab descent to penetrate the last strongholds of Santiago’s traditional elite. In spite of his family’s conspicuous devotion and leadership of one of the elite Catholic religious movements, he admitted in the interview for this research that he has been unable to join the most prestigious and exclusive social club in the capital.
The point of all this is that although certain Catholic virtues and the formation of character in the Catholic tradition are highly valued amongst the elite and can serve to establish distinctions between members in a Catholic milieu, the individual’s religiosity does not by itself provide social distinction in the sense of capital accumulated in one field and then used in another. The fact that elite members are aware of this and are still willing to pursue religious ideals in their daily lives may have to do with the fact that these ideals are appreciated in and of themselves. The Catholic members of Chile’s economic elite interviewed for this research refer to religious and moral behaviour as ideals conducive to happiness and a fuller religious life; they praise those amongst them who are willing or able to organise their daily routines, more or less systematically, around these ideals, and seek to educate their children in them. To conceive of religious practice and beliefs solely as means that serve a social purpose is to deny religion its autonomy and to make it an ancillary component of the economic structure. It is to reject the possibility of genuine religious beliefs that inform moral commitments, the ‘transcendental anchorage for ethics’ (Weber, 1993: 90).
Finally, the issue here is not that status differences or exclusivist practices do not exist amongst Chile’s economic elite. In fact, the argument has been made that the education of the will and the ideal of the exercise of virtue in everyday working and family life constitute important signals of moral or religious worth, which coexist and sometimes supersede other signals, such as elegance and good taste. However, to recognise the capacity of these practices and ideals to establish social differences or boundaries need not presuppose Bourdieu’s premises about instrumental action. To do so, and to let the belief in the ‘pervasiveness of egoism’ (Alexander, 1995: 193) guide the inquiry leads to an impoverished account of what it is that people are involved in when they behave religiously.
Conclusions
While most discussions of social status in Western societies associate prestige with consumption (of luxury goods or exclusive cultural products and styles) this article has analysed the role that religiously inspired behaviour – in particular, the education of the will and the value of self-discipline – can play as a status signal. In the context of consumer societies, where acquisitive behaviour is the norm across social groups, more powerful sources of social status may be the capacity for self-control, the observance of rules, and self-negation. In other words, restraint rather than indulgence, however sophisticated the latter may be, can elevate a social group or set of individuals to the top of the status hierarchy; especially in a Catholic milieu where these virtues are held in high esteem. Against a Bourdieusian understanding of religious action, it has been suggested that the prestige which religious virtue can bestow upon individuals represents a symbolic hierarchy of a different order, namely one based on moral or religious worth. Such a hierarchy cannot simply be made homologous with, let alone dependent upon, the economic order inasmuch as it conceives of religious ideals as ends in themselves and not as means to social progress. Adherence to the ideal of self-control in the search for a ‘feeling of worthiness’ and the recognition of personal virtue by others need not be inspired by interest or be subject to ideological misrecognition, but can respond to genuine religious convictions and aspirations.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on an earlier version of this article.