895168

research-article2020
SCP0010.1177/0037768619895168Social CompassGog: Neo-liberal subjectivities and spiritual entrepreneurship

social
Article
compass

Social Compass
1­–17
Neo-liberal subjectivities and © The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
the emergence of spiritual sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0037768619895168
https://doi.org/10.1177/0037768619895168
entrepreneurship: An analysis journals.sagepub.com/home/scp

of spiritual development
programs in contemporary
Romania

Sorin GOG
Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania

Abstract
This article analyzes the changes in industrial relations and labor market in Romania
during the past two decades and explores the neo-liberal socialization devices that have
emerged after the financial crisis and the way they offer legitimacy to the vast economic
transformations that took place in this region. Using the ‘varieties of capitalism’
approach I investigate the specific forms of dis-embedded neoliberalism institutionalized
in Romania and the precarisation of the workforce through labor market de-regulations,
short-term contracts and emphasis on the flexibility and employability of workers. The
article focuses on the outburst of spiritual development programs and the vast field of
alternative spiritualities that haves proliferated in Romania and the way this cultural
change mediates the formation of an immanent spiritualized ethics of authenticity that
lends itself to the creation of a new ‘spirit of capitalism’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007).

Keywords
alternative spiritualties, neo-liberalism, post-socialism, spiritual development programs

Résumé
Cet article analyse les modifications dans les relations industrielles et le marché du
travail en Roumanie dans les deux dernières décennies. Il explore les outils de

Corresponding author:
Sorin Gog, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, Babeș-Bolyai University, Bulevardul 21 Dec. 1989 No.
128, Cluj-Napoca, 400604, Romania.
Email: sorin.gog@ubbcluj.ro
2 Social Compass 00(0)

socialisation néo-libérale qui ont émergé après la crise financière et la manière dont
ces derniers offrent une légitimité à la large transformation économique qu’a connue
la région. Se basant sur l’approche des « Variétés du Capitalisme », l’auteur enquête
sur les formes spécifiques de néo-libéralisme désintégré institutionnalisé en Roumanie
et sur la précarisation de la force de travail à travers la dérégularisation du marché du
travail, les contrats à court termes et l’accent mis sur la flexibilité et l’employabilité
des travailleurs. L’article se focalise sur l’explosion des programmes de développement
spirituels et le large champ des spiritualités alternatives qui ont proliférés en Roumanie
et la façon dont ce changement culturel mène à la formation d’une éthique immanente
et spiritualisée de l’authenticité qui se prête lui-même à la création d’un nouvel « esprit
du capitalisme » (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007).

Mots-clés
néo-libéralisme, post-socialisme, programme de développement spirituels, spiritualités
alternatives

Introduction: alternative spiritualities and the

transformation of the Romanian post-communist
religious field
The financial crisis of 2008–2009 had a long-lasting and deep impact on the economies
from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and has generated turbulent societal
transformations, particularly in those countries where industrial production was export-
oriented and depended on the fluxes of global market demands (Ban, 2016; Dăianu,
2018; Bohle and Greskovits, 2007). Romania was particularly affected by the economic
depression and became a country where radical structural reforms were experimented
with, in order to generate macro-economic stability (Ban, 2016; Trif, 2013; Dăianu et al.,
2014),This was achieved through painful economic reforms that entailed dramatic
de-regulations of labor markets and the institutionalization of new industrial relations
that could attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), which was deemed crucial for
re-launching the economy. In this process Romania became one of the most neo-liberal
countries from the region with a newly reformed corporate governance that had one of
the worst capital-labor arrangements that encouraged trans-national capital to move their
production facilities to the periphery of European Union where cheap and accessible
workforce was available (Bohle and Greskovits, 2012).
This article focuses on the formation of neo-liberal subjectivities that are being
embedded in a variety of personal and spiritual development programs which have
become increasingly popular in Romania after the financial crisis. By analyzing the vast
economic transformations that took place in CEE, I show that one way of dealing with
the significant de-regulation of the labor market, flexibility and emphasis on employability
was the experimentation with alternative spiritualities and the proliferation of a wide
spectrum of spiritual workshops that offer the Romanian middle class new tools of
self-development.
Gog: Neo-liberal subjectivities and spiritual entrepreneurship 3

The article draws on a two year extensive research carried out by a team of sociologists
and anthropologists that analyzed the wide popularization of alternative spiritualities in
post-socialist Romania. The research focused on two major cities from Romania:
Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca both of them being important economic centers that have
registered in the last decade significant economic growth and development in the
industrial and tertiary services sectors. The data collected within the research project was
primarily qualitative. We interviewed approximately 80 people that were involved in the
field of alternative spiritualities either as active participants or as experienced facilitators.
The interviews attempted to capture the most popular forms of alternative spiritualities
and explore the way they are appropriated in every-day life by the persons involved in
this emerging field. The research focused as well on the spaces and modes of transmission
of these spiritualities and mapped out the main positions taken within the religious field,
the delineations, main narratives and practices that substantiated the new spiritual
ontologies. Three such modes of transmission were important for this research project.
First of all, the workshops of spiritual development which act as an important hub where
these new spiritual ideas are experimented with and where actual training programs are
implemented. Participant observations allowed us to understanding better the variety of
programs of spiritual development and analyze the way these practices and ideas are
appropriated, the underlying social dynamics and the mechanisms of religious
acculturation. Secondly, we analyzed the blogs and virtual spaces that play an significant
role in spreading the new spiritual development programs not only in terms of
popularization of these practices, but also in terms of facilitating forms of continuous
(spiritual) learning. We employed a thematic content analysis of hundreds of blog entries,
alongside audio and video lectures that act as an important means of religious socialization
of a segment of the Romanian middle class that took interest in the last decade in these
new technologies of spiritual self-development. Thirdly, the research focused on book
production and Romanian publishing houses that are specializing in catering to people
interested in personal and spiritual development programs and alternative spiritualities.
For this part of the research we selected native Romanian authors that are starting to
affirm themselves in this field and for whom the publishing of a book certifies to the
wider audience a field of competence and an area of expertise, but we took into
consideration also translated authors, especially those that have become best-sellers in
Romania or who are being extensively quoted or referred to by local spiritual teachers,
trainers and facilitators that promote personal and spiritual development programs.
One example of such spiritual development program, among innumerable others,
which we investigated during our fieldwork, was a workshop that focused on sacred
femininities, organized by an important spiritual urban hub from a Romanian metropolitan
area that acts as a socializing platform and educational facilitator for people interested in
meaningful self-development. The event was attended by almost 200 women, all dressed
in corporate suits, with complex lifestyles and well educated that wanted to explore
spiritual emancipation and learn how to navigate as empowered women the complex
world of today:

This is how you become both powerful and feminine. A power that is not force, but comes from
within you. Because you are in a genuine contact with who you are. And you know how to
4 Social Compass 00(0)

reach you, without losing this contact. All this practical things come forth instinctively,
organically, in the moment you allocate time for you, without preoccupying your mind, without
forcing yourself. When you are at [. . .] the multi-national company, when you are on the road,
between children and work, you can stop with your car for five minutes. [. . .] In the moment
you do this, your breathing helps you somehow to shut down your body and to restore yourself,
allows your feminine energy to circulate throughout the day and reinvigorate itself, and this
gives you vitality. (Spiritual development trainer, public lecture)

Workshops like this are part of a wider cultural transformation that post-socialist
Romania is undergoing. Particularly in the past decade there has been an explosion of
alternative forms of spiritualities ranging from different types of Yoga to Reiki, Bowen
techniques, Theta Healing, Holotropic breathing, Familial constellations, Cranial-sacral
therapy, etc. that increasingly spread within popular urban culture. Hundreds of new
Romanian books are published each year on spiritual wellbeing, mindfulness and inner
healing, new blogs are launched together with podcasts, newspapers and TV programs
that promote personal and spiritual development as an important component of every-
day life (Simionca, 2016; Palaga, 2016; Tobias, 2016; Trifan, 2015). But what is more
indicative of these changes is the fact that these alternative spiritualities are not only a
growing part of popular urban culture, but have been institutionalized within certain
professional fields in Romania such as psychology and management. The spiritual turn
within these professions are not marginal and exotic experiments, but constitute
significant paradigmatic shifts that are backed up by local academic expertise,
professional associations and other knowledge production centers (Gog, 2016).
Romania is one of the most religious countries in the European Union, religious
socialization ranks very high, church-state relations are strong, there are high rates of
religious participation and religious practices especially in rural areas and various
religious groups are political active and very influential in setting up the public agenda
(Stan and Turcescu, 2007; Pickel and Sammet, 2012). The emerging field of alternative
spiritualities produces a distinctive break with the traditional forms of religions that have
been active in Romania: Eastern Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism and a wide
spectrum of Evangelical movements (Gog, 2016), and institutionalizes new modes of
imagining religious subjectivities, promotes radical forms of religious individualism,
produces new technologies of religious socialization that are more mobile and dynamic,
engages the spiritual subject with new cultural ontologies and temporal structures and
opens up believers to a more cosmopolite and non-dogmatic religious perspective.
But the most distinctive feature of the field of alternative spiritualities in comparison
with the traditional religious field is the emphasis set on spiritual entrepreneurialism.
Within the various programs of spiritual development there is a strong attention given to
cultivating a new type of subjectivity that is constituted as an individualizing and
autonomous unit centered on spiritual virtues such as individual creativity, flexibility,
self-reliance and self-development. It socializes a self for which the creative and
entrepreneurial use of its own inner resources becomes the most valuable asset of spiritual
self-development and well-being. The strong emphasis set on spiritual entrepreneurialism
makes the field of alternative spiritualities one of the most radical vectors of generating
popular cultural legitimation of the contemporary neo-liberal transformations that have
Gog: Neo-liberal subjectivities and spiritual entrepreneurship 5

been prevalent in CEE countries, to which only limited attention has been given by the
religious studies scholarship from this region.
In order to understand this radical spiritual turn within the Romanian religious
landscape and the proliferation of programs of spiritual development which focus on
producing an entrepreneurial subjectivity, we need to turn our attention to the vast
economic transformations that took place in this country after the financial crisis and
analyze the impact the de-regulation of the labor market and the creation of a competitive
environment had on the lives of workers. The next section explores these transformations
and traces back the distinct capitalist regimes that have emerged in CEE to radical neo-
liberal reforms, analyzes the way the new industrial relations have been shaped by
dramatic labor reforms and looks at how capital-labor relations have been rearranged.
Only an understanding of the structural changes of the CEE labor markets and capitalist
regimes will enable us to understand the vast proliferation of personal and spiritual
development programs and socialization of a neo-liberal subjectivity that is attuned to an
economic environment centered on competitivity, creative work and enhanced
productivity.

Labor market de-regulation and the shaping of new

industrial relations at the margins of Europe
The ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach has dedicated in the past years considerable
attention to the Central Eastern European (CEE) region and its transition from a state-
planned economy to the integration into the European Single Market (Lane et al.,
2007; Jäger and Springler, 2015; Hall and Thelen, 2009). By comparatively analyzing
industrial relations, corporate governance, market relations, welfare policies and
state-crafting, these studies have tried to understand the relatively successful (in
comparison to the Latin American countries) insertion of CEE post-socialist
economies into the capitalist world-market (Bohle, 2006). Nevertheless, certain
different trajectories are discernible within the wider CEE region when the degree of
marketization and cost transfer policies are taken into consideration. Bohle and
Greskovits (2012) point out that the former communist countries have developed in
the past two decades three general types of capitalisms: neo-corporatist capitalism
that advanced a balanced relationship between capital and work by developing an
inclusive economic strategy based on compensating with generous welfare provisions
and subsidies schemes the costs of the marketization of national economies; embedded
neoliberalism pursued a more market-oriented capitalism but aimed at compensating
vital domestic industries and vulnerable social groups; and radical neo-liberalism that
implemented profound structural reforms and economic policies meant to institute a
non-regulated market coupled with austerity measurements that could ensure a rapid
transition to capitalism (Bohle and Greskovits, 2012: 29–32). These different post-
socialist capitalist regimes are due to a variety of factors including communist
legacies, existing economic and human resources, geo-political relations, but most of
all to specific political dynamics that have configured different typologies of state
programs and agendas (Ban, 2014; Bohle and Greskovits, 2012).
6 Social Compass 00(0)

Romania alongside Bulgaria and the Baltic countries stood out as a cluster of countries
that implemented the most radical neo-liberal market reforms and in terms of industrial
policies, foreign investment and capital-labor relations developed national economies
that resemble semi-peripheries situated at the margins of the wider capitalist global
economy (Bohle and Greskovits, 2012: 44–48). In comparison to this, the Visegrad
countries (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic) managed to adopt a much
faster pace of economic and social transformations and achieved a better insertion in the
global market economy by developing complex industries and coherent political
strategies that led to macro-economic stability. This was even more the case with Slovenia
that implemented protectionist measures, carefully developed its national industries and
buffered the transition costs through generous welfare provisions and so achieved a level
of corporatism similar to that of the Western European countries. Both the Visegrad
countries and Slovenia became during the post-communist transition semi-core
economies (Bohle and Greskovits, 2012: 44).
Comparing the countries of Central and Eastern Europe through the ‘varieties of
capitalism’ paradigm enables a better understanding of the social transformations and
specific economic rationalities that have structured the Romanian society in the past two
decades. This comparative approach enables us to see how Romania gradually became a
dependent capitalist economy (Ban, 2016) that generated specific post-socialist
institutional mechanisms in order to allow for a rapid integration into the world market
economy. An important aspect of the transformation of Romania, along other Central and
Eastern European countries, into dependent market economies was the implementation
of asymmetrical policies that eroded the welfare state and social protection mechanisms
and created an economic environment that was favorable to foreign investments.
An important aspect dependent capitalist economies is related to labor reforms in
order to facilitate capital investors access to a lucrative labor market which is essential
for the reduction of production costs; an attractive labor market is also instrumental for
national governments located at the periphery of the European Single Market in order to
attract foreign investments, which becomes an important condition for economic growth.
The radical reform of the labor market was one of the most important hallmarks of the
Romanian economy during the last two decades and had a significant impact on its
economic position within the wider Central and Eastern European region.
Romania’s hallmark response to this growing economic depression was a thorough
reform of the labor market in order to attract bigger investments in its national economy.
With the support from the European Union (Ban 2016; Trif, 2016), Romania implemented
policies pertaining to the deregulation of the labor market in order to make it more
competitive on a global scale and attractive for FDI. The flexibilization of the labor
market was considered a necessary requirement imposed by the EU institutions and IMF
for borrowing money necessary to bypass the financial crisis (Trif, 2016: 4).The
deregulation of the labor market meant first of all a new Labor Code (2011) and a new
Social Dialogue Law (2011) which restricted dramatically the bargaining power of
unions and set up new industrial relations that enabled private enterprises to engage in far
more advantageous business conditions with the national workforce.
The new laws redefined the member threshold required for a union to engage in
negotiations with management and it made it extremely difficult to create union
Gog: Neo-liberal subjectivities and spiritual entrepreneurship 7

confederations that could fight at the national level for the protection of workers’ rights
(Adăscăliței and Guga, 2015; Stoiciu, 2016a, 2016b; Trif, 2013). If before the crisis
Romania had a progressive Labor Code that protected the rights of workers through
collective and sectorial agreements which established the mandatory framework for
negotiating company-level agreements, after the financial crisis the new legislative
changes shifted the locus of social dialogue from a centralized space of interaction
(where unions could cooperate and impose national agreements) to a local setting. By
devolving the capital-labor negotiations to individual companies, in which unions could
hardly be active (due to the new legal provisions), most unions from Romania lost a great
deal of membership: the unionization rate dropped from 70% before the integration in
EU to 40% after the adoption of the new Labor Law (Chivu et al., 2013: 12). Company
level agreements dropped from over 7,500 in 2008 to around 4200 in 2012 (Delteil and
Kirov, 2016: 201). A more dramatic decrease was recorded in terms of collective
agreements: if before 2011 98% of the working populations was covered by such a
collective agreements, after the adoption of the new Labor Code this fell to 36% (Trif,
2016: 6). Labor conflicts decreased from 116 in 2008 to 35 in 2011 and similarly the
number of workers participating in such protests decreased from 204.8 to 55.6 (thousands)
(Chivu et al., 2013: 35, 77).
A novel change was related to the introduction of flexible short-term contracts in
place of indeterminate term contracts that gave employees a greater leverage over
workers: the renewal of their contracts depended on their productivity and on the
profitability of the new chains of production. This meant a greater insecurity for workers
as the employers had legal rights to dispose easily of their employees by not renewing
their contracts. The new provisions also included the possibility to reduce the number of
weekly working hours and decrease wages and to unilaterally determine the quantity and
type of work performed by an employee without the consent of the union (Trif, 2016).
The new laws allowed as well for a considerable lengthening of the trial period of
workers and this led to a growing proportion of atypical work contracts and generated
precarious employment (Chivu et al., 2013). These measures gave rise to a more flexible
labor market in which workers were structurally forced to adapt to the economic
requirements of managers and had to cope with the pressure of easy dismissal in case
productivity levels dropped or investments were not returning considerable profit rates.
The transition from a planned economy to a competitive-capitalist one had a dramatic
impact in the last decade on the Romanian labor force. Rising unemployment due to
several waves of de-industrialization, massive migration to Western Europe as means of
escaping poverty, deregulation of the labor market in order to make it more flexible and
competitive, weakening of unions and the creation of structural hierarchical spaces that
allowed for more freedom of capital mobility (easy termination of work contracts) and
risk-reduction of investments (rise of short term employment which could be renewed
only if the new lines of production were successful on the European market) – all this led
to structural pressure on workers to adapt to a new precarious and competitive
environment. The capacity to be creative, flexible and adaptive to new economic
situations and to be more self-disposed and individually efficient in the context of
de-unionization and rise of ever increasing complex devices of productivity assessments,
became a structural requirement of the post-communist Romanian work environment.
8 Social Compass 00(0)

It is in this context that we have to situate the boom of alternative spiritualities and
spiritual development programs and the vast proliferation of alternative spiritualities that
took place during the last decade in Romania. The incorporation of these spiritualities in
various professional fields constitutes an internal adaptation mechanism to the vast
transformations of labor markets at the periphery of European Union. By this I don’t
imply a causality dependency between economic transformations and religious cultures,
but a habitus affinity between the genuine spiritual concerns of human beings and
increasingly competitive work environment. The spiritual cultivation of new forms of
subjectivities centered on entrepreneurialism of the inner self, productivity, employability
and a meaningful relation to one’s job became an important element of professional
development. The field of alternative spiritualities produced new cultural cosmologies
that creatively engaged with the dynamic transformations of every-day life and generated
new religious practices of the self and innovative religious technologies of self-
development that became especially attractive for segments of the urban educated strata
that was losing interest in traditional forms of institutionalized religions (Gog, 2016).

Spiritual entrepreneurialism and the religious

socialization of neo-liberal subjectivities
In the past decade neo-liberalism has been an important topic of research within the field
of religious studies and it has acted as both an epistemological and historical background
of understanding various social, cultural and economic processes associated with religion
(Gauthier, 2016; King and Carrette, 2004). Limited attention has been given to the way
these economic transformations are shaping a distinctive neo-liberal subjectivity and
how capitalism is sustained by new forms of cultural and social legitimations. Boltanski
and Chiapello (2007) call this the new spirit of capitalism and analyze the way the
dynamic organizational changes and management strategies of capitalist enterprises
have been transformed in the past century in France and supplemented with new forms
of moral justifications. More recently, Chandler and Reid (2016) have made this the topic
of a ground-breaking study on how these changes are reflected in the socialization of a
distinctive type of self, entitled: ‘The neo-liberal subject: Resilience, adaptation and
vulnerability’. Their research allows for a more flexible approach to the issue of subject
formation than the classic post-Foucauldian one, that is centered on bio-political
governmentality which produce through specific technologies of self a sense of interiority
that is pre-determined and pre-structured by the prevailing regimes of power (Rose,
1998). Chandler and Reid emphasize the way neo-liberalism involves not only a macro
economic and political change, but as well a new creative understanding at the level of
subject that seeks to empower the self and instill in it a new ethics of authenticity and
agency. They emphasize the specificities of the neo-liberal subjectification and the
novelties brought forth by neo-liberalism in comparison to the liberal modes of
government:

The knowledge capacities and capabilities necessary for the neo-liberal subject are very
different from those of the traditional or classical liberal subject. The capabilities and capacities
required are those that enable the subject to actively embrace and adapt to change rather than
Gog: Neo-liberal subjectivities and spiritual entrepreneurship 9

resist it. In this case, a liberal education in the arts and sciences is held to be of less value than
a capacity to adapt efficiently and effectively through greater self-awareness and emotional
reflectivity. [. . .] Whereas liberal frameworks of governmentality focused upon how
governments might regulate and control specific levers of the economy – inflation levels,
unemployment rates, interest rates, and such – under neo-liberal approaches, the governance of
economic processes is displaced by the enabling of societal processes, particularly of knowledge
and communication, facilitating the adaptive capacities of individuals, enabling them to make
better or more efficient lifestyle choices. (Chandler and Reid, 2016: 76–77, my emphasis).

In line with Dardot and Lavall (2013) analysis that emphasizes the processes
contributing to ‘manufacturing the neo-liberal subject’, Chandler and Reid approach
allows for a more culturalist understanding of how the process of justification of
capitalism functions and the role this plays in disseminating every-day legitimations of
neo-liberal reforms. Neo-liberal subjectivities are not simply generated by capitalist
enterprises or by bio-political governmentality structures, they are appropriated and
developed by individuals who strive to make sense and adapt to contemporary economic
transformations that rely autonomy, resilience and self-reliance.
My research depicts processes that are becoming increasingly popular in other parts
of the world. Emma Bell and Scott Taylor (2003) analyze the way work-place spirituality
fulfil the role of pastoral care in capitalist organizations in UK. Similarly Dennis LoRusso
(2017) analyzes the emergence of a neo-liberal ethic and spirituality in American
corporate culture with a significant impact in managerial practices. Limited attention has
been given in contemporary literature to how neo-liberal subjectivities are developed in
post-communist settings.
In the case of post-socialist Romania the majority of people involved in the field
of alternative spiritualities and almost all the clients that take part in personal and
spiritual development programs (some of them quite expensive) are part of the middle
class, that are highly educated and cosmopolitan and are active in important
professional sectors (economists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, creative workers, service
specialists, sales, IT-personnel, engineers, experts, consultants, etc.). Engaging with
the field of alternative spiritualities is a very complex endeavor and the spiritual
techniques and practices that are acquired by participants in these workshops cannot
be dismissed as magic superstition: the field generates complex scientific legitimation
of these practices, are supported by professional associations and academic networks,
produces thorough reflexivity with serious philosophical questions about self, society
and the nature of an authentic life and creates socialization devices that shape
subjectivities in long term.
In this section I would like to argue that the idea of a spiritualized creative subject, a
subject that is self-disposed and dissolves society in favor of an individualistic and pro-
active practice of the self, a subject that religiously affirms the world and seeks to render
it entrepreneurial meaningful, constitutes an important vector for socializing a neo-
liberals subjectivity. One specific feature that appears in many of the spiritual development
programs is that of entrepreneurialism. God himself is portrayed as the Great Entrepreneur
in whose liking spiritual subjects have to develop themselves as creative and self-
developing individual beings that foster a pro-active attitude towards life.
10 Social Compass 00(0)

The particles have become ‘the matter’ and manifest universe, and the waves have taken the
‘shape’ of Laws and principles that govern the Creation. So, on one side, we have the ‘product’
and, on the other, ‘the management'. [. . .] At one point, because he wanted to extend his
‘business’, God took (to be read, created) collaborators. A kind of employees, contractors,
customers. An entire Celestial hierarchy was created, a Divine Organizational Matrix.
(Regăsește-ți Strălucirea, 2013)

Some authors identify the main object of faith, be this Divinity, Source of Life, Power,
Presence (all the other important ontological concepts that appear within the field of
alternative spiritualities) as being in their very essence either entrepreneurial or
manifestations of prosperity and abundance in the life of those that understand and accept
their spiritual grounding. This cultivation of a spiritualized understanding of God
compels the participants in spiritual development programs to actualize divine
entrepreneurialism in their own life: ‘Therefore, after the Creator’s own image, we all
have an entrepreneurial nature. It would be wise to realize this aspect and act accordingly’
(Regăsește-ți Strălucirea, 2013). By entrepreneurialism these authors refer not only to a
professional activity that is a vital component of all forms of managerial leadership, but
also to a specific way of relating to one’s spiritual self that encourages a subjectification
process which opens up the individual to a transformative process centered on the ethical
appropriation of an ontological entrepreneurialism. By ‘ontological entrepreneurialism’
I mean the religious perspective that states that the active principle of creating and
sustaining the reality is in its very essence entrepreneurial. God is seen as an Entrepreneur
and because of this ethics is shaped according to the same standard: the spiritual subject
learns to develop an entrepreneurial attitude towards one’s own self and regard the inner
resources as the most valuable assets which can be put to use in both personal and
professional life: ‘When each of us start to become again the Entrepreneurs of our own
lives, we reconnect with an aspect of our Being which is primordial, and you will see that
everything becomes a game’ (Regăsește-ți Strălucirea, 2013).
An important aspect of this new form of spiritualized entrepreneurialism is
independence and autonomy in terms of emotional, decisional and financial aspects.
Autonomy generates responsibility towards oneself and toward the relationships in
which one is engaged and brings forth genuine care for the results of one’s work.
Entrepreneurialism is presented sometimes in various spiritual development programs as
a necessary component of becoming a mature person and this fosters a narrative aimed
at stimulating the continuous awareness of the spiritual subject to cultivate self-growth.
In contrast to the position of the waged-laborer which is assimilated with that of an
immature child, the entrepreneur is presented in these programs of spiritual development
as an autonomous and self-providing person. This implies most of all financial autonomy:
the employee only receives a standard wage and does not care how the money is created
and actually made, whereas the (spiritualized) entrepreneur thrives on engaging
passionately with multiple structures of opportunities in search of various sources of
income; it also implies freedom – freedom to choose with whom to interact: clients,
suppliers, employees, whereas the employee has only the possibility to function within
an institutionalized hierarchy; and last it implies decisional autonomy – the spiritualized
subject understands that they must be an responsible self-reliant person and actively
Gog: Neo-liberal subjectivities and spiritual entrepreneurship 11

avoids the situations in which others decide in their place. This process of taking absolute
charge of one’s own life is the desiderata of spiritual growth and is presented as the path
to becoming a mature and fulfilled human being.
It is in this context that the concept of ‘spiritual entrepreneurialism’ can be best
contrasted with the classic spirit of entrepreneurialism: ‘The spiritual entrepreneur is the
person who accepted and incorporated his spiritual nature in everything that he thinks,
does, has and creates a business whose products, processes, relationships and perspectives
represent him’ (Regăsește-ți Strălucirea, 2014). Spiritual entrepreneurialism means to
infuse with a spiritual perspective all economic processes and re-enchant capitalism in an
unprecedented manner in Romania. It also means to spiritualize work and economic
relations, but the device through which this is achieved enables a far greater impact than
just the economic sphere of life.
The discovery of this spiritual interiority as a locus of spiritual experience is made
possible by the promotion of radical individualism and the devaluation of religious
communities through the programs of spiritual development (Gog, 2016). Whereas the
traditional religious field places great emphasis on religious community and spiritual
kinship among believers, within the personal development programs we see the
formation of radical proactive subject that relies only on their own self and is made
capable of generating their own wellbeing through spiritual practices. The inner self
becomes the most important resource that the spiritual subject has at its disposal
because it enables the individual and unmediated spiritual procedures through which it
can act on their own self. Instances of this argument can be often encountered among
motivational speakers that have professional training in business and have acted
previously in management positions (HR mostly) who offer such services to workers
engaged in the corporate environment. Similar arguments and teachings are prevalent
in (spiritual) psychology and in the many psychotherapy programs offered to the
professionals that want to explore spirituality as a way into inner healing that can lead
to a prosperous and abundant life.
The spiritual subjects are made aware that they have at their disposal the required
spiritual techniques to generate inner healing and well-being: this can be activated by
the believer through complex but accessible forms of Neuro-Linguistic-Programming
and are directly linked with success and productivity. Bankrupt relationships, material
misery, professional failures are all due to the absence of an adequate spiritualized
inward subjectivity: ‘In reality, happiness feeds success, and not the other way around.
Therefore, success is the result of the state we are in. You can’t have long term
achievements if you feel bad’ (Theta Healing NP, 2016b). It is this inward subjective
wellbeing that is considered to be a prerequisite of productivity. The decision to
affirm a subject that finds within their own self the required resources to live a happy
and meaningful life within the boundaries of an authentic present leads to productivity
and abundance:

The effects of well-being over results are indisputable: sales rise with 37%, chances to get a
promotion rise with 40%, productivity rises with 31%, happy people are 10 times as engaged
in the workplace, they live longer, get higher marks, weakened symptoms when they are sick
and, in general, happy people behave nicely with others (Theta Healing NP, 2016b).
12 Social Compass 00(0)

The main reason this productivity is not felt as a burden is because of the way the idea
of work is reframed within the field of alternative spiritualities and made to represent
something that is part of a meaningful and exuberant life. Work is not an external duty
that humans impose on themselves in order to secure their material reproduction, but an
important component of their ethic of authenticity that gives them joy and meaningfulness:

You can spot successful people in a crowd: they are the ones who have sparks in their eyes and
when you ask them about work and life they recount every detail with dearness! Successful
people are those that are happy when it is Thursday, not when it’s weekend! I see success in the
shoe-maker who tells me that he’s been doing the same work for 45 years – and he is happy
about it, in the doctor who tells me jokes when he inserts a cannula, in the cleaning lady who
convinces me that my desk looks better tidy, even though it gives her more work to do, in my
mother who decided to become a homemaker to support her family. Success (and automatically
happiness!) comes from I WANT, not from I MUST! (Copii Curcubeu, 2013).

Another important feature of the wider field of alternative spiritualities that allows for
proximity with a neo-liberal subjectivity is the idea of self-responsibilization of the
spiritual subject. Defining well-being as something within the reach - and entirely
dependent on one-self, and making the subject the authoritative instance of authentic
self-fulfillment sets an immense burden on making the individual accountable for what
goes wrong in their life. Self-subjectification means not only well-being, abundance and
productivity, but also accountability. For example a mistake that has to be avoided by
spiritual persons, of which the field of alternative spirituality constantly warns about, is
that of avoiding to assume responsibility for your own life. The non-spiritual person ‘[..]
put the blame on society, government, country, city, economy, politicians, partner,
children, etc. for your own failures, because you don’t see what you’re doing wrong or
what you don’t know and you can’t learn if mistakes don’t exist’ (Theta Healing NP,
2016a).
All these transformations of the subject come with the explicit promise that this will
produce prosperity here on earth: ‘it can amplify your abilities and even help you discover
what career to choose in life, and it can delete beliefs, fears and negative programs that
keep you blocked and restrained from developing your unlimited potential’ (Theta
Healing NP, 2015). It also has direct impact on the way money is perceived. The idea of
a healthy relationship with money appears very often in these alternative spiritualities.
This usually implies a harsh critique of traditional religions for considering money an
evil and for portraying living a prosperous rich life as something sinful. Drawing money
to oneself, having access to plentiful resources and knowing how to use them in order to
realize one’s dreams represents an important component of the wider alternative
spiritualities and constitutes an explicit promise of many spiritual development programs.
‘Many of our financial drawbacks are caused by the wrong way in which we think and
act, Theta Healing knows how to clarify these barriers and drawbacks. You’ll learn how
to have a healthier relationship with money and with successful people. You’ll understand
the true definition of abundance and you’ll see how the flux of money will re-enter your
life’ (Theta Healing NP, 2015).
Gog: Neo-liberal subjectivities and spiritual entrepreneurship 13

By emphasizing the proximity with a governmentality that relies on specific techniques

of the self that generate an autonomous, self-sufficient and creative subjectivity, I do not
imply that behind these transformations there are networks of capitalist agents that
produce ideologies meant to reify social reality which increase exploitation of work
through the concealing of the mechanisms of surplus-extraction. These transformations
are rather produced and re-produced by actors active in these economic sectors as coping
mechanisms and as imperatives of self-transformations in order to fit into the ever
expanding economic narratives of capitalism and its constitutive spirit. Although there
are instances of socialization of employees through compulsory participation in personal
development programs or creative expression workshops, the vast majority of programs
and seminars are organized outside companies and are paid entirely by participants.
Within the wider Romanian religious field the imagination and socialization of a new
type of spiritual subjectivity constitutes an absolute novelty. By qualifying this new
subjectivity as neo-liberal, I have in mind the specific adjustments operated by the
alternative spiritualities field in order to couple the transformation of the self with the
recent economic changes taking place in those sectors that are most connected to global
capitalism or to cosmopolite contemporary culture. Neo-liberal spiritual subjectivity can
analytically be distinguished from traditional religiosities at two levels. First, at the level
of the specific positions it takes toward capitalist transformations: it promotes openly
entrepreneurial values and argues for the entrepreneurialization of all spheres of life, it
links inner transformations (wellbeing, mindfulness and spiritual fulfillment) with
external requirements toward productivity, it promotes the cultivation of flexibility,
creativity and responsibility and seeks actively to deactivate the religious negative
attitude towards money by promoting prosperity, abundance and material comfort as
external signs of spiritual healing. And second, at the level of how it socializes the
spiritual subject: as a self that is disposed entirely on its own inner resources, a self that
is both the agent and the object of spiritual quest, a self completely embedded in an
ontology of presence that cultivates spiritual self-gratification over a religious community
and an ethics of self-authenticity over the moral requirement to politically transform
society. Neo-liberal spirituality understood along these two registers represents the
emergence and popularization of a new and radical form of subjectivity that has no
precedent in the Romanian religious landscape.

Conclusions: the spiritual re-enchantment of capitalism

in post-socialist settings
The field of alternative spiritualities in contemporary Romania is very dynamic and has
produced a great variety of political ontologies, transformative requirements and
cultural imaginaries. It is important to avoid any form of essentialization of this
diversified and heterogeneous field and to prevent reducing it either to a bio-political
effect of the governmentalization procedures so intimate to the post-foucauldian critique
or to the false forms of consciousness reifying the capitalist relations of production as
emphasized by neo-Marxist critical theories. Within this burgeoning field there are
strong streams of anti-capitalist spiritualities that are very critical of consumerism, the
14 Social Compass 00(0)

hyper-commodification of social reality, the competitive individualism that erodes

communities, the growing class-difference and the immanentization of everyday life.
There is a flourishing critique among the practitioners of alternative spiritualities of the
contemporary corporate world of work and a strong emphasis is set on ecological
alternatives to capitalism. In some circles there are attempts to organize alternative
communities and make these spiritualities an integral component of non-consumerist
lifestyles and emancipatory social projects.
Nevertheless the field of alternative religions has produced as well in the past decades
significant streams of alternative spiritualities that are embedded in the capitalist
transformations and have generated significant instances of socializing neo-liberal
subjectivities. Boltanski and Chiapello (2007) have emphasized the capacity of capitalism
to internalize criticism and re-adjust its structural relations, rearrange production
processes and reform the justification narratives by creating a new ‘spirit of capitalism’
that is capable of producing encompassing legitimation for the new economic regimes.
By analyzing the systemic changes in managerial discourses and practices, they have
emphasized the flexibility of capitalism and its creative ability to appropriate both social
and artistic critiques through the re-imagination of new ‘cities’ in which the crisis and
critical narratives of previous forms of capitalism are incorporated. I argue that the
emergence of neo-liberal spiritualities constitutes such an appropriation and that the
fusion of spiritualities with capitalism leads to a new mode of understanding of capitalist
organizations.
The religious and spiritual critique of capitalism has been appropriated by the ‘new
spirit of capitalism’ and incorporated in its intimate mode of functioning and has produced
a new justification regime. This critique draws on both the idea of just a society (social
critique) and a new form of authenticity (artistic critique) that departs from the
commodification of ‘authentic’ goods and services produced for mass consumption that
characterized the second spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007: 439). In
terms of realizing a more just society the spiritual appropriation of the critique imagines
a radical democratic-atomistic society in which all individuals are endowed with
autonomy, creativity and have at their disposal the necessary (inner) spiritual resources
to live a meaningful and abundant life. This justification regime overlaps as well with the
post-socialist political critique of hegemonic communism that planned bureaucratically
all aspects of life and abolished individual freedom and worth. It also recognizes the
worker as the true value-creator of goods and services and as the creative source of
productive labor. The spiritual critique attempts to abolishes the capital-work divide by
emphasizing that entrepreneurialism is a divine quality that everyone can (democratically)
reproduce and socializes the spiritual subjects to develop a managerial attitude towards
the limited external resources and the wealth of internal resources and so, to pro-actively
engage with the complexities of life and work.
In terms of realizing an authentic lifestyle, along the artistic critique that has
accompanied all previous capitalist formations, the alternative spiritualities produces a
radical criticism of eschatological religious escapism, of commodified exotic cultural
consumption and of all form of magical esotericism and engages with the inner-self as
the genuine site of fulfillment and authentic well-being. The realism of the inner self and
Gog: Neo-liberal subjectivities and spiritual entrepreneurship 15

the ontology of presence that brings the self to it-self and generates reflexivity of its own
existential position in life constitutes a promise of self-fulfillment which is predicated
upon the individual subject as the site and the agent of liberation. In doing this it attempts
to embody the great emancipation claim of the artistic critique and to institute the inner
self as the autonomous and sufficient source of an radical authentic existence.
The fact that this spiritualized form of capitalism that emerges at the periphery of
European Union constitutes an internal criticism of earlier forms of capitalist accumulation
and incorporates reformist critiques in order to make it more just and inclusive, cannot
be denied. But criticism can be appropriated also in order to make way for new forms of
domination and oppression and generate a new mode of capitalist accumulation that
encapsulates workers and extracts the surplus value in a more subtle and insidious ways
(Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007: 425). The idea of a self-reliant and autonomous subject
that relies only on itself and its inner spiritual resources constitutes an important
requirement of the neo-liberal mode of governance that dissolves society and
communitarian ties in favor of individual responsibility and duty of self-development.
The ethics of self-authenticity and the spiritual transformation of the self as an absolute
interiority where all problems are generated and where everything can be solved, can
lead, and it most cases it does lead, to a de-politicization of every-day life and of the
current economic inequalities and social injustices. By turning the attention to the
spiritual interiority and subjective entrepreneurialism, the material externalities of
capitalism are made invisible. The programs of personal and spiritual development that
emerged in Romania after the financial crisis are indicative of the wider neo-liberal
economic transformations and re-arrangements of work relations, managerial governance
and new spirit of capitalism.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Anca Simionca, Andrada Tobias, Cristine Palaga and Andrei Herța for all the
fruitful discussions and debates we had about the relationship between neo-liberalism and
contemporary spiritualities.

Funding
This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research
and Innovation, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-2515.

References
Adăscăliței D and Guga Ș (2015) Negotiating agency and structure: Trade union organizing strategies
in a hostile environment. Economic and Industrial Democracy 38(3): 473–494.
Ban Cornel (2014) Dependenţă şi dezvoltare: economia politică a capitalismului românesc
[Dependence and development: the political economy of Romanian capitalism]. Tact.
Ban Cornel (2016) Ruling ideas: How global neoliberalism goes local. Oxford University Press.
Bell E and Taylor S (2003) The elevation of work: Pastoral power and the new age work ethic.
Organization 10(2): 329–349.
Bohle D (2006) Neoliberal hegemony, transnational capital and the terms of the EU’s eastward
expansion. Capital & Class 30(1): 57–86.
16 Social Compass 00(0)

Bohle D and Greskovits B (2007) Neoliberalism, embedded neoliberalism and neocorporatism:

Towards transnational capitalism in central-eastern Europe. West European Politics 30(3):
443–466.
Bohle D and Greskovits B (2012) Capitalist diversity on Europe’s periphery. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Boltanski L and Chiapello E (2007) The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso.
Chandler D and Reid J (2016) The neoliberal subject: Resilience, adaptation and vulnerability.
London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Chivu L, Ciutacu C, Dimitriu R and Ţiclea T (2013) The impact of legislative reforms on industrial
relations in Romania. Budapest: ILO.
Copii Curcubeu (2013) The measure unit of success. Blog. Available at: http://copiicurcubeu.ro/
unitatea-de-masura-a-succesului/ (accessed February 2018).
Dăianu D (2018) Emerging Europe and the great recession. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
Dăianu D, d’Adda C, Basevi G and Kumar R (2014) The Eurozone crisis and the future of Europe.
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dardot P and Laval C (2013) The new way of the world: On neoliberal society. London: Verso
Books.
Delteil V and Kirov V N (2016) Building and reshaping social dialogue in the CEECs: from formal
Europeanization to new dependencies in Bulgaria and Romania. In: Delteil V and Kirov VN
(eds) Labour and social transformation in central and eastern Europe: Europeanization and
beyond. London: Routledge, 185–206.
Gauthier F (2016) Religion in the neoliberal age: Political economy and modes of governance.
New York : Routledge.
Gog S (2016) Alternative forms of spirituality and the socialization of a self-enhancing subjectivity:
Features of the post-secular religious space in contemporary Romania. Studia Universitatis
Babes-Bolyai Sociologia 61(2): 97–124.
Hall P A and Thelen K (2009) Institutional change in varieties of capitalism. Socio-economic
review 7(1): 7–34.
Jäger J and Springler E (eds) (2015) Asymmetric crisis in Europe and possible futures: Critical
political economy and post-Keynesian perspectives. London: Routledge.
King R and Carrette J (2004) Selling spirituality: The silent takeover of religion. New York:
Routledge.
Lane D, Myant M and Cernat L (2007) Varieties of capitalism in post-communist countries.
London: Palgrave.
LoRusso JD (2017) Spirituality, corporate culture, and American business: The neoliberal ethic
and the spirit of global capital. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Palaga C (2016) The quest for the spiritual self: Anti-capitalist and neo-liberal forms of spirituality
in contemporary Romania. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia 61(2): 145–164.
Pickel G and Sammet K (eds) (2012) Transformations of religiosity: Religion and religiosity in
Eastern Europe 1989–2010. Wiesbaden: Springer Science & Business Media.
Regăsește-ți Strălucirea (2013) Why is God an entrepreneur. Blog. Available at: http://andreafilip.
com/de-ce-dumnezeu-este-un-antreprenor/ (accessed February 2018).
Regăsește-ți Strălucirea (2014) ‘Spiritual entrepreneur versus entrepreneurial spirit. Blog.
Avaialble at: http://andreafilip.com/antreprenor-spiritual-vs-spirit-antreprenorial/ (accessed
February 2018).
Rose N (1998) Inventing ourselves: Psychology, power, and personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gog: Neo-liberal subjectivities and spiritual entrepreneurship 17

Simionca A (2016) Personal and spiritual development in contemporary Romania: In search of

ambivalence. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia 61(2): 11–25.
Stan L and Turcescu L (2007) Religion and politics in post-communist Romania. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Stoiciu V (2016a) Annual review of labour relations and social dialogue. Friedrich Eberhard
Stiftung Report.
Stoiciu V (2016b) Romania’s trade unions at the crossroads. Friedrich Eberhard Stiftung Report.
Theta Healing NP (2015) Theta healing benefits. Blog. Available at: http://www.nicoletapopliceanu.
com/beneficii-theta-healing/ (accessed February 2018).
Theta Healing NP (2016a) ‘Ten common errors that block your success. Blog. Available at:
https://www.nicoletapopliceanu.com/10-dintre-cele-mai-frecvente-greselile-majore-care-iti-
blocheaza-succesul/ (accessed February 2016).
Theta Healing NP (2016b) The power of well-being. Blog. Available at: https://www.
nicoletapopliceanu.com/puterea-starii-de-bine/ (accessed February 2018).
Tobias A (2016) Steps on life change and spiritual transformation: The project of the self. Studia
Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia 61(2): 125–144.
Trif A (2013) Romania: Collective bargaining institutions under attack. Transfer: European
Review of Labour and Research 19(2): 227–237.
Trif A (2016) Surviving frontal assault on collective bargaining institutions in Romania: The case
of manufacturing companies. European Journal of Industrial Relations 22(3): 221–234.
Trifan E (2015) Coaching and personal development: The construction of the self in a community
of practice in Bucharest. Romanian Journal of Society & Politics 10(2): 119–132.

Author biography
Sorin GOG is a Lecturer at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, teaching courses on
contemporary sociological theories, sociology of religion and paradigms of secularization. He has
been a research fellow at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), Max Planck Institute for Social
Anthropology (Germany), Institut für Wissenschaft der Menschen (Austria), NEC (Romania),
CEU-IAS (Hungary) and the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Finland). His current
research project focuses on the field of personal and spiritual development programs and the way
they are related to the current economic and political transformations of labor markets in Central
and Eastern Europe.
Address: Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, Bulevardul 21 Dec. 1989 No. 128, Cluj-Napoca
400604, Romania.
Email: sorin.gog@ubbcluj.ro