Talk by Dr. Campbell Jones, University of Auckland at CBS
Tuesday, 7 February 2012 at 14:00-15:30
 
We continue to be surrounded by talk of the market having sentiments, having moods about which we must concern ourselves, and responding savagely to us mere mortals if we dare to disobey it. In this personification of the market, we often find attribution not only of human characteristics to the market, but characteristics that are more properly divine. In the same way that the question we have to ask of every personification is ‘what kind of person is being imagined?’, here likewise we have to ask ‘what kind of divine being is being imagined?’. Many contemporary evocations of the market become meaningful, I will argue, when we grasp this attribution of godlike characteristics to the market. We can then read in refreshing light what we find in the book of Job, for instance, that ‘God’s voice thunders in marvellous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding’ (Job 37:5). Under the scrutiny that I propose here, we sense, however, that this is not quite the God that we might expect. This is a clumsy god that mumbles, one that requires us to do a great deal of work in looking after it and attending to its needy nature.
Campbell Jones teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Previous publications include Philosophy and Organisation (Routledge, 2007, with René ten Bos) andUnmasking the Entrepreneur (Edward Elgar, 2009, with André Spicer). For more details visit  www.campbelljones.info