In: M. Stausberg, S. Engler (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion, Oxford, New York: OUP 2016, 355-64. CHAPTER 24 Economy Anne Koch Chapter Summary • Economy is significant for religion both as a co-system and for its permeating reli- gious structures. • Economy, in the historical form of capitalism, shapes present contemporary socie- ties and governs politics. • The political economy of liberalism in varying forms provides the ideological and ethical foundation of most capitalist societies. • Markets are interactional arenas of exchange, investment, and speculation. • Religious organizations are engaged in various sectoral markets. • Religious organizations produce all kinds of private and public goods, entailing products and services. Introduction: The Cultural and Social Embeddedness of Economy Like any cultural phenomenon, religion and economy are interdependent and may oppose, intensify, counter-caricature, stabilize, or delegitimize each other across soci- etal subsystems. This interaction of society, politics, and economy is and has been described with the concept of political economy, but views vary as to which of these (sub)systems is dominant. In recent times, economy has again been seen as embedded in social relationships and especially as culturally conditioned and varying across cul- tures. Previously—within neoclassical economic theory (see Seele/Zapf, “Economics,” this volume)—culture was seen as an exogenous factor, meaning that culture is a stable framing condition and therefore outside the theory and irrelevant to economic analy- sis. The same goes for individual preferences. Change of preferences was not a relevant explanatory factor partly due to the smaller period of time that was of interest. This dif- fers from today’s economic theory that takes the history of institutions, path dependen- cies, and changes of mental models into account, for example in market research, which sometimes even considers the religious affiliation of consumers. Towards the back-