He says he is “officially horrified”

… and who can blame him? An oldish post has Adam Kotsko “officially horrified” over at An und für sich.

The reason? The very existence of the Journal of Management, Spirituality, & Religion. Don’t let the innocuous looking www.jmsr.com lull you into any sense of anything; indeed, my initial judgement was that the enjoining of the terms proves the death of all four.

The problem (insofar as it is a problem), I think, is that journals such as this tap into an undercurrent that exists on a research level (for example). There is also the unintended consequence: what one learns does not lead inevitably to one’s career. And there is the temptation to deal with the exotic, hence the attempt at speculative philosophy in Newcastle University Business School.

It is also worthwhile to mention the work – such as it is – of Robert H. Nelson (Economics as Religion and the earlier Reaching for Heaven on Earth: the theological meaning of economics). On the one hand, these do not advance theoretically beyond (the young) Hegel, Weber, or Zizek’s Weber (‘Protestantism becomes superfluous, it can vanish as a mediator, the moment the very social reality is structured as a “Protestant universe”’, For they know not what they do, Verso, London, p 184), but these “advance” the debate toward the utility of certain claims, which in turn will eventually gloss over the meaning of management as control.

Regardless, though, what’s funny is this comment from the original thread:

I think I would subscribe if there was a fourth term that would somehow destabilize the equation with the promise of possible awesome consequences: say, Journal of Management, Spirituality, Religion and Deliciousness….

Much better than my own attempt: “Interdisciplinary Journal of Management, Spirituality, Religion & Street Art”