Jorge Gonzalez
Assc Professor
Weissman School of Arts and Sciences
Department: Sociology and Anthropology
Areas of expertise: Sociology, Religion and Culture, Anthropology, Critical Theory
Email Address: george.gonzalez@baruch.cuny.edu
> View CV- Biography
- Teaching
- Research and Creative Activity
- Grants
- Honors and Awards
- Service
George González is Associate Professor of Sociology and Religion and Culture at The CUNY Graduate Center and at Baruch College, City University of New York. Within the study of religion, he specializes in religion and economy, implicit religion (a species of sociology of religion), cultural capitalism studies, theories and methods in the study of religion, and religion and society (Modern West). He is the author of two single-authored research monographs, several peer-reviewed and scholarly articles, and has been invited to contribute to edited volumes in the study of capitalist spirituality. In addition to writing for academic audiences and lecturing at academic conferences and events, he has written for online general readership journals, has been invited to speak to local communities, and has appeared on public-facing discussion panels.
Professor’s González’s second major research project focused on the American ritualization of consumer capitalism. Within the scope of this project, he conducted ethnographic fieldwork with the famed New York City-based radical performance community and choir, the Stop Shopping Church (a.k.a. Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping) between 2016 and 2021. He has also conducted historiographical research into American marketing history in tandem with the fieldwork. A new manuscript based on this research and entitled The Church of Stop Shopping and Religious Activism: Combatting Consumerism and Climate Change Through Performance published with NYU Press (December 2024). His first book, Shape-Shifting Capital—Spiritual Management, Critical Theory, and the Ethnographic Project (Bloomsbury), also grounded in an ethnographic case study, is a phenomenological and critical analysis of the ‘spiritual’ turn in organizational theory and workplace practice.
Most broadly, Professor González’ research interests lay in the sociocultural legislation of Western metaphysics and the concrete and specific form of power that has attached to neoliberalism, as a historically specific kind of cosmology. In this, he pays special attention to cybernetic theory as a cultural dominant. He remains especially interested in approaching the study and criticism of what he calls (highly affective, embodied, symbolically mediated, and aestheticized) 'post-secular' capitalism through the framework of religious social change. Professor González has special interests in the work ethnography and a lived religion approach can do at the intersections of religion, science, and global capitalism and as a complement and corrective to critical theory. Methodologically, he maintains an open dialectic between the macro and micro, paying close attention to both structuring structures and practices of creative human agency, as these limiting conditions of freedom and control apply to the sociological imaginations of both ethnographic interlocutors and scholars of religion.
One key implication of Professor González’ extant research is the suggestion that if we take a close look at two cultural branches of capitalism, management (his 2015 book), and marketing/branding (his 2024 book), we will note that the cybernetic social ontology that is the “operating system” of contemporary surveillance capitalism long precedes this moment and was facilitated by, among other things, the incorporation of countercultural, antinormative, explicitly spiritualizing, and neo-hegemonic visions of the social by a networked commercial discourse influenced by new science and its attendant accounts of complex adaptive systems, recursive embodied rationality, and decentered subjectivity. The interrelationships and co-implications of language and economy are fundamental to Professor González's work in this area. He argues that anti-humanistic academic social theory reproduced (often surreptitiously) key elements of the logic of network capitalism in dangerously an-economic, a-historical, and/or politically naive ways. Our contemporary burdens, González's research suggests, are more fully praxiological and social (fundamentally religious according to a contingent Durkheimian application) than excessively theoretical or straightforwardly political.
Professor González is currently working on a suite of articles on 'post-secular' capitalism that include engagements with the phenomenology of capitalism, the sociology of theory, and issues of method in religious studies. He is due to begin historical background work/content analysis on a new major ethnographic project on Latino/a/x NYC workers AY 26-27. He hopes to commence the fieldwork itself in 2028. New areas of focus for future research will include Latino/a/x studies in religion, the sociology and anthropology of time, and the metaphysics of American Constitutional law and jurisprudence.
Professor González is on the Editorial Board for Critical Research on Religion and the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. He is also a Research Associate at the Center for Critical Research on Religion and Research Associate at the Edward Bailey Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion (U.K.). Professor González served on the inaugural steering committee for the Religion and Economy Program Unit at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) from 2016-2021. Professor González has reviewed for various scholarly journals, academic publishers, and university presses in the sociology of religion, religion and popular culture, and religious studies.
Trained as a philosophical anthropologist (or existential sociologist), Professor González is committed to empowering students to better comprehend how power is reproduced in their own richly textured lives and teeming lifeworlds. As the son of Latin-American immigrants (from Perú and Cuba), a first-generation college student, and a native New Yorker, Professor González enjoys pursuing a research and teaching agenda at CUNY that is often rooted and grounded in the textures, cadences, and concerns of New York City life.
Professor González received his B.A. from Yale College (Comparative Literature), an M.A.R. from Yale Divinity School (Ethics), and a Ph.D. from Harvard Divinity School (Religion and Society). Prior to moving to Baruch in the Fall of 2018, he taught at Monmouth University (West Long Branch, NJ).
Professor González is the recipient of several grants and awards, including the Eugene Lang Junior Faculty Fellowship (AY 22-23) and PSC-CUNY research grants (AY 20-21, 21-22, 22-23, 23-24).
Click here to stay up to date with Professor González’ scholarly and professional activities.
Education
Ph.D., Religion and Society, Harvard Divinity School Cambridge MA
M.A., Ethics, Yale Divinity School New Haven
B.A., Comparative Literature, Yale College New Haven CT
| Semester | Course Prefix | Course Number | Course Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 2025 | ANT | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2025 | REL | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2025 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Spring 2025 | SOC | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Fall 2024 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Fall 2024 | ANT | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Fall 2024 | SOC | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Fall 2024 | REL | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2024 | SOC | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2024 | REL | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2024 | ANT | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2024 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Fall 2023 | SOC | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Fall 2023 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Fall 2023 | ANT | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Fall 2023 | REL | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2023 | REL | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2023 | SOC | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2023 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Spring 2023 | ANT | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Fall 2022 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Spring 2022 | IDC | 3001H | Honors - People of New York |
| Spring 2022 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Spring 2022 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Fall 2021 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Fall 2021 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Fall 2021 | REL | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Fall 2021 | ANT | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Fall 2021 | SOC | 3180 | The Religion of Everyday Life |
| Spring 2021 | IDC | 3001H | Honors - People of New York |
| Spring 2021 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Fall 2020 | ANT | 3085 | Sel Topics Ant/Soc |
| Fall 2020 | REL | 3085 | Spec Topics: Religion & Cult |
| Fall 2020 | ANT | 5000 | Independent Study ANT I |
| Fall 2020 | SOC | 3085 | Sel Topics Ant/Soc |
| Spring 2020 | IDC | 3001H | Honors - People of New York |
| Fall 2019 | REL | 3085 | Spec Topics: Religion & Cult |
| Fall 2019 | ANT | 3085 | Sel Topics Ant/Soc |
| Fall 2019 | SOC | 3085 | Sel Topics Ant/Soc |
| Fall 2019 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Spring 2019 | IDC | 3001H | Honors - People of New York |
| Spring 2019 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Fall 2018 | ANT | 3085 | Sel Topics Ant/Soc |
| Fall 2018 | SOC | 1005 | Introductory Sociology |
| Fall 2018 | SOC | 3085 | Sel Topics Ant/Soc |
| Fall 2018 | REL | 3085 | Spec Topics: Religion & Cult |
Books
Gonzalez, G. (2024). The Church of Stop Shopping and Religious Activism: Combatting Consumerism and Climate Change Through Performance (NYU Press) . (p. 336). New York, NY, NYU Press.
Gonzalez, G. (2015). Shape-Shifting Capital: Spiritual Management, Critical Theory, and the Ethnographic Project. (p. 413). New York, NY, Bloomsbury.
Journal Articles
Gonzalez, G. (2021). The Psychic Life of Consumer Power: Judith Butler, Ernest Dichter, the American Marketing Reception of Freud, and the Rituals of Consuming Religion. Critical Research on Religion , 9(1). 8-30.
Gonzalez, G. (2016). Towards an Existential Archeology of Capitalist Spirituality . Religions, 7(7). 22 (15,929 words).
Gonzalez, G. (2015). The Ritualization of Consumer Capitalism: Catherine Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice in the Age of Starbucks. Implicit Religion, 18(1). 3-44.
Gonzalez, G. (2012). Shape-Shifting Capital: New Management and the Bodily Metaphors of Spiritual Capitalism. The Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour , 42(3). 325-344.
Gonzalez, G. (2010). Spirituality at Work: Commodification or Progress?. Interconnections , 5. 23-30.
"Floating Signifiers, Floating Economies, and our Liquid Age: A Sociological Assessment of Deconstruction as Method in Religious Studies". In Progress.
Book Chapters
Gonzalez, J. (2026). "La Virgencita in My Back Den: Profe Carrasco and the Phenomenology of Latino/a/x Religious Experience in a Commodified Age.". Worlds Reimagined, Worlds Remade: Essays in Honor of David Carrasco University of New Mexico Press.
(2026). "Prismatic Religion: the Stop Shopping Church and the Post-Religious Critique of Post-Secular Capitalism". Implicit Religion Keynotes Bloomsbury. In Progress.
Gonzalez, G. (2017). Towards an Existential Archeology of Capitalist Spirituality. Religion and the Individual: Belief, Practice, and Identity (pp. 107-128). Basel,Swtizerland.
Conference Proceedings
Gonzalez, J. (2023). I delivered the the keynote address at the 45th annual Implicit Religion Conference in the U.K (Remote). My paper was entitled "Prismatic Religion: The Stop Shopping Church & The Post-Religious Religious Critique of Post-Secular Capitalism.".
Presentations
Gonzalez, J. (2026, November 14). "The Arts-Based Public Pedagogy of the Church of Stop Shopping in a Post-Secular Age.". American Academy of Religion Annual Conference. Boston, MA: American Academy of Religion (AAR).
Gonzalez, J. (2026, September 14). "The Church of Stop Shopping and Religious Activism: Combatting Consumerism and Climate Change Through Performance.". CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences.
Gonzalez, J. (2026, October 14). "Religious Studies and the Epistemic Context of Business Humanities: Articulating Difference in Sameness.". Annual Business Humanities Conference at Seton Hall University. South Orange, NJ
Gonzalez, J. (2026, November 14). ""The First Job of a Church is to Save Souls": Political Ecology and the Ritual Activism of the Stop Shopping Church". American Academy of Religion Annual Conference. San Diego: AAR.
Gonzalez, J. (2026, March 14). "Profe. Carrasco, a Borderlands Lens, and La Virgencita in my Back Den". CarrascoFest, a Festschrift in Honor of David Carrasco.
Gonzalez, J. The Religion of Everyday Life. Religion in America Colloquium, Princeton University. Princeton, NJ: Department of Religion, Princeton University.
Gonzalez, J. (2021, June 3). The Ritual Commitments of Consumer Capitalism. Implicit Religion U.S.A.. Chicago: The Edward Bailey Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion.
Gonzalez, J. Management Pedagogies. American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Conference. : American Academy of Religion.
Gonzalez, G. (2020, December 3). "Losing his (Fake) Religion?: Reverend Billy's Unfunny Environmental Turn". American Academy of Religion Annual Conference. Boston (Virtual): American Academy of Religion.
Gonzalez, J. (2019, June 30). "Consumer Ritual and its "Saintly" Discontents". Implicit Religion Conference (U.S.A.). West Long Branch, N.J.: The Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion.
Gonzalez, G. (2019, March 31). The Flexibility of Postindustrial Work. Implicit Religion Research Fellow Seminar. UK: Bishop Grosseteste University.
Gonzalez, G. (2018, March 31). The Flexibility of Postindustrial Work. : The Murphy Institute--CUNY (Prof. Youngdahl).
Gonzalez, G. (2018, November 30). Ernest Dichter, the "Good Life", and the Study of Religion. American Academy of Religion Annual Conference. : AAR.
Gonzalez, G. (2017, November 30). Conjurations of Spiritual Capitalism: The Anthropology of Galina Lindquist Between the Imperatives of Critique and Real Presence. Society for the Anthropology of Religion. : SAR-AAA.
Gonzalez, G. (2016, October 31). “From Shape-Shifting Capital to the Ritualization of Consumer Capitalism: The ‘Religious’ Implications of Performativity as Cultural Dominant”. Stirling Students Critical Religion Association. : University of Stirling.
Gonzalez, J. (2015, May 31). The Ritualization of Consumer Capitalism: Catherine Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice in the Age of Branding". Th Denton Conference in Implicit Religion (UK). U.K.: Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion.
Gonzalez, G. (2015, November 30). Exploratory Remarks on Religion and Economy. American Academy of Religion Annual Conference. : AAR.
Gonzalez, G. (2015, November 30). Towards an Existential Archeology of Corporate Spirituality. American Academy of Religion Annual Conference. : AAR.
Gonzalez, G. (2015, June 30). The Ritualization of Consumer Capitalism. Faith at Work in the New Economy: An Interdisciplinary Symposium in the Study of Religion and Labor. : Princeton University.
Gonzalez, G. (2014, March 31). The Violence of Non-Critical Thinking. : Red Bank Humanists.
Gonzalez, G. (2013, February 28). The Sweat of Sweets and the Souls of Our Lost Communications. : The Ranney School.
Gonzalez, G. (2013, July 31). Encountering Differences. : Universalist Unitarian Congregation of Monmouth County.
Gonzalez, G. (2013, November 30). The Ritualization of Consumer Capitalism: Catherine Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice in the Age of Branding. American Academy of Religion Annual Conference. : AAR.
Gonzalez, G. (2012, November 30). Galina Lindquist: Conjuring Hope and Critique at the Dawn of Millennial Capitalism". American Academy of Religion Annual Conference. : AAR.
Gonzalez, G. (2010, November 30). Spiritual Discipline and the New Metaphors of Contemporary Business Management. American Academy of Religion Annual Conference. : AAR.
Other Scholarly Works
Gonzalez, J., & Handelman, K. (2024). Parodying and Using Religion to Try to Save the Planet.
Gonzalez, G. (2017). Shopping for Salvation in a Brand New World.
Gonzalez, G. (2011). The Market, Warren Buffet, and the Occupation of Wall Stteet.
Gonzalez, G. (2011). All the Market's a Stage.
Reviews
Gonzalez, J. (1970,January 1). Review of Michael Jackson's Critique of Identity Thinking. Reading Religion, American Academy of Religion (AAR).
Gonzalez, G. (2020,January 1). Review of Francis Stewart's Punk Rock is My Religion--Straight Edge Punk and "Religious" Identity. Critical Research on Religion.
Gonzalez, G. (2018,March 22). Review of Kathryn Lofton's Consuming Religion. NYU Revealer.
Gonzalez, G. (2017,January 1). Review of Lauren Langman and George Lundskow's God, Guns, Gold, and Glory. Critical Research on Religion.
Gonzalez, G. (2017,January 1). Review of Kerry Mitchell's Spirituality and the State--Making Nature and Experience in America's National Parks.
Gonzalez, G. (2017,January 1). Review of Faegheh Shirazi's Brand Islam. Contending Modernities Blog (Notre Dame).
| Title | Funding Agency Sponsor | Start Date | End Date | Awarded Date | Total Funding | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| “Beyond Nature: The Stop Shopping Church’s (Post) Religious Resurrection of an Animate World” | PSC CUNY 53 | 07/01/2022 | 06/30/2023 | 04/15/2022 | 800 | Completed |
| After Religion, at the Shopocalypse: Performance and Earth Activism at Reverend Billy and the Church | PSC CUNY 52 | 07/01/2021 | 06/30/2023 | 04/15/2021 | 3500 | Completed |
| Counter-Visions of ‘Religion’: Performance and Politics at Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping | PSC-CUNY 51 | 07/01/2020 | 12/31/2022 | 04/17/2020 | 3350 | Completed |
| “Gerd Stern, USCO and Intermedia Systems Corporation: Immersive Art, the Spiritual Counterculture, and the Rise of Post-Secular Capitalism (1967-1983)” | PSC-CUNY 54 | 07/01/2023 | 06/30/2024 | 04/18/2023 | 2700 | Funded - In Progress |
| Eugene Lang Application | Eugene Lang Fellowship | 06/01/2022 | 06/30/2023 | 04/11/2022 | 7077.02 | Funded - In Progress |
| Honor / Award | Organization Sponsor | Date Received | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eugene Lang Junior Faculty Fellowship | 2022-06-28 | The Eugene Lang Junior Faculty Fellowship is awarded to promising young scholars on the faculty. | |
| PSC-CUNY Research Award | 2022-03-01 | ||
| PSC-CUNY Research Award | Professional Congress/City University of New York | 2021 | |
| PSC-CUNY Research Award | Professional Congress/City University of New York | 2020 | Traditional-A grant in the amount of $3350.00 for the book project:<br>"Counter-Visions of ‘Religion’: Performance and Politics at Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping". |
| Summer Research Fellowship | Monmouth University | 2016 | Competitive grant for summer research |
| Nomination: Wabash Center Dinner for New Teachers | Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion | 2014 | I was nominated by a dean, department chair, or colleagues for this event. Every year only a handful of invitations are extended. |
| Dean's Dissertation Fellowship | Harvard University | 2008 | |
| Marquand Scholar | Yale Divinity School | 2000 | |
| Distinction in the Major | Yale College | 1996 |
Department
| Committee Name | Position Role | Start Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curriculum Committee | Committee Chair | 5/1/2019 | Present |
| Executive Committee of the Department | Committee Member | 3/1/2021 | Present |
College
| Committee Name | Position Role | Start Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Macauley Honor's Admissions Committee | Committee Member | Present | |
| Weissman Curriculum Committee | Committee Member | Present | |
| Curriculum Committee | Liaison | Present | |
| Weissman Curriculum Committee | Secretary | Present | |
| Department Academic Advisor | Faculty Advisor | Present | |
| Executive Committee of the Department | Committee Member | Present | |
| Baruch PSC Chapter Executive Committee | Alternate Delegate | 7/31/2021 | |
| Weissman Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Alliance | Committee Member | 6/30/2021 |
University
| Committee Name | Position Role | Start Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Faculty Membership Committee (FMC) | Committee Member | 8/29/2024 | Present |
Professional
| Organization | Position Role | Organization State | Organization Country | Start Date | End Date | Audience |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Academy of Religion (AAR) Religion and Economy Unit Steering Committee | Committee Member | 1/1/2016 | Present | |||
| Journal of Religion and Popular Culture | Editorial Review Board Member | 10/31/2025 | Present | International | ||
| American Academy of Religion | Member | Georgia | United States | Present | International | |
| Religion and Economy Program Unit (AAR) | Committee Member | Georgia | United States | Present | International | |
| Critical Research on Religion | Reviewer | Massachusetts | United States | Present | International | |
| Implicit Religion | Reviewer | International | United Kingdom | Present | International | |
| Religions | Reviewer | International | Switzerland | Present | International | |
| Bloomsbury | Reviewer | New York | United States | Present | International | |
| Journal of Critical Research on Religion | Board Member | Massachusetts | United States | Present | International | |
| Center for Critical Research on Religion | Research Associate | Massachusetts | United States | Present | International | |
| Edward Bailey Centre for Implicit Religion | Research Associate | International | United Kingdom | Present | International | |
| Bloomsbury | Reviewer, Ad Hoc Reviewer | 1/1/2016 | Present | |||
| Implicit Religion | Reviewer, Ad Hoc Reviewer | 1/1/2014 | Present | |||
| Critical Research on Religion | Reviewer, Ad Hoc Reviewer | 1/1/2014 | Present | |||
| Religions | Reviewer, Ad Hoc Reviewer | 1/1/2016 | Present | |||
| Religion and Popular Culture | Reviewer, Ad Hoc Reviewer | 1/1/2016 | Present | |||
| Critical Research on Religion | Editorial Review Board Member | 1/1/2016 | Present | |||
| Center for Critical Research on Religion | Member | 1/1/2016 | Present | |||
| American Academy of Religion | Session Chair | California | 11/23/2019 | 11/23/2019 | ||
| Implicit Religion Conference (U.S.A.) | Workshop Organizer | 1/1/2019 | 5/31/2019 |
Public
| Organization | Position Role | Organization State | Organization Country | Start Date | End Date | Audience |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quad Cinema | Discussant | New York | United States | Present | Regional |