Deinstitutionalization of beliefs and Corporate Social Responsibility: Between neo-Pentecostalism and spirituality

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the impact of recent transformations in the socio-religious field, in the economic and political spheres – more specifically, those derived from the processes of religious deinstitutionalization. The current literature on the subject has elaborated at least two hypotheses regarding this topic: one characterizes the current scenario in terms of neo-Pentecostalization of the world, while the other is oriented more towards concepts such as spirituality. We concentrate on a case study that synthesizes the religious dimension with politics and economics: the field of Corporate Social Responsibility – CSR. In empirical terms, we set out to study the first International Congress of Social Responsibility (CIRS), which took place in October 2013 in Argentina. Two results can be highlighted from our study: on the one hand, CSR involves networks that express an area of social power that concentrates different resources. On the other hand, there is a range of values that go from spirituality to “NGO-ism”, and that is characterized by different ways of collective construction centered on the individual as an agent of transformation.