The Commodification of Hinduism in Praxis of Capitalism Culture in the Postmodern Era

Abstract

Postmodern era is marked by social and economic changes that developed into a capitalistic economy throughout the world. Capitalism dominates and has implications for all aspects of life including religion. Capitalism has influenced paradigm and ways of human religion today. Ideally, religion has a sacred dimension, but capitalism makes profane of the sacredness of religion. Capitalism creates unclear boundaries between sacred and profane in religion. One form of capitalism is commodification. Commodification is a way of capitalism to carry out the accumulation of its capital goals or as a process of changing the value of a function or to become an exchange rate. One of commodification impact is the triumph of the market which has implications for the rise of public consumerism. Consumerism that occurs in the commodification of Hinduism refers to cultural products such as trends and fashions that are in demand by the market, for example, canning or penjor. Community consumerism indirectly has implications to reduce the sacred value of means of worship, to reduce sradha and religious costs ​​and to loss of socio-religious values ​​in society which usually arise through ritual activities such as ngayah, to make banten/canang or penjor. Religion is thrown culturally from its core position in power institution of capitalist society. The administrated community is characterized by a thin network of regulatory institutions that organized and filled human activities. Unwittingly this situation has given rise to reality of hedonistic mobs, consumerism and privatized leissure. This puts religion as a social superstructure which is no longer an autonomous entity that is vacuum from social interactions outside. Even entities 'outside religion' can dictate (change) religion so that religion continues to change following of shifting of economic structure and cultural structure.