Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Putting A Price On Zen: The Business Of Redefining Religion For Global Consumption, Joshua A. Irizarry

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Over the past several decades, Zen has become a mark of global cosmopolitanism. Largely divorced from its religious context, the word “zen” appears in many languages with a remarkable diversity of accepted meanings and usages. In this paper, I outline the historical and cultural factors which have contributed to the dramatic semiotic transformation of Zen in the popular imagination and international media over the past century. I demonstrate that ideas about Zen have evolved through strategic cultural and linguistic associations, and show how the resulting polysemy has led to Zen becoming an ideal marketing byword—one that is freely …