This article offers a reading of the effect of exchange on subjectivity. Two modes of exchange are discussed: commodity-exchange and gift-exchange. Following Marx, Simmel, Lukács, and Bewes, commodity exchange is argued to be detrimental to subjectivity insofar as it leads to abstract, mediated social relationships, and reifies the subject. Debates around the notion and application of reification are investigated. The anthropological insight of Mauss on gift-exchange is introduced and used to challenge elements of the thesis of reification and process of (...) on-going commodification. Gift-exchange is argued to perpetuate concrete, immediate social relations. Critical attention is drawn to the gift as critique of the commodity. My interrogation suggests that there is a problem because the gift is often over-idealized in much gift discourse and figures as a binary opposite to the commodity. This is especially the case with one of the leading contemporary theorists on the gift, Jacques Godbout. Themes that support the notion of the gift, such as family and community bonds, reciprocity, and ‘face to face’ relations, are often taken for granted as being fully enabling. On the other hand commodity exchange is perceived as being exclusively disabling. The article begins to challenge this thinking. (shrink)

As postcolonial approaches in the studies of religion have challenged liberal-secular presuppositions in addressing non-Western forms of life, there has been a growing concern to examine the normative presuppositions of postcolonial approaches in the field of religious ethics. This paper addresses how Charles Taylor, Talal Asad, and Homi Bhabha show their normative concerns for addressing the interstitial existence of ethnic-religious minorities, negoriating between their subaltern religions and the inclusive-but-exclusive potential of the liberal secular frame of integration. These thinkers raise normative (...) critiques of the spatiotemporal and moral frameworks of liberal, secular integration while suggesting thgeir own normative visions for transforming the existing form of liberal secular democracy. They reveal different models in their normative critiques and visions: Taylor suggests a postsecular and dialogical model, while Asad sets forth an antisecular traditionalist model and Bhabha a pro-secular and vernacular one. (shrink)