Ideas and interests. On religion and economic development

While concentrating on the rise of modern capitalism, Weber's seminal studies have little to say about the impact of religions on contemporary economic development. The paper comments about recent approaches to find an answer to the questions Weber left open. If one disregards a priori constructions of culturalist and rational-choice-theories, these approaches end up again in restating the circular relationship between ideas and interests showed already by Weber, albeit clearly with a higher emphasis on interests. However, the author argues that it would be premature to interpret this result simply as a confirmation of Weber's "disenchantment" thesis. Rather, it goes back to the transformation of the economy itself into an entity that preaches "values", proclaims "visions" and in this sense develops an affinity to religious movements. The author deepens this view by referring to Marx' and Polanyi's interpretation of capitalism as a system of disembedded markets. The disembedding of markets gives rise to a historically new potential of social uncertainty which the actors need to cope with, thereby developing symbolisms showing striking affinities with religious forms. Nevertheless, the analogies between capitalism and religion are limited.