Purification or Pollution? The Debate over ‘Workplace Spirituality’

Abstract

The commentary on ‘workplace spirituality’ is deeply polarized. Among advocates, the integration of spirituality and work is hailed as the ultimate cure-all for the problems facing the modern work organization. Conversely, critics see it as yet another form of capitalist appropriation. This article advances a neo-Durkheimian cultural sociological analysis of these polarized responses. Proponents espouse a schema of purification, which holds that once the moral pollutions of bureaucracy and rationalization are excised from the workplace, the spheres of spirituality and work will be integrated, which will lead to the sacralization of the latter by the former. This is assumed to end the compartmentalization of workers’ professional lives and to imbue their workplaces with ethicality and existential meaning. By contrast, critics espouse a schema of pollution, which holds that any attempt to integrate spirituality and work is doomed to failure under capitalist conditions, for it will result in workers’ spiritual lives suffering from alienation, instrumentalization, and commodification, and their work being oppressive, manipulative, and inhuman. We conclude with a reflection on the implications our analysis holds for future research on ‘workplace spirituality’.