Abstract

The eternal struggle that Max Weber wrote about reappears today, updated, in the conflict between religion and marketing concerning the use of symbols belonging to the religious field. Conflicts can arise when the religious field's hegemony is threatened. These are triggered by the religious field, when the semantic invasions of advertising are clearly visible in the public space and are therefore perceived as an open challenge. Ecclesiastical aggressiveness about the misappropriation of symbols is not always rewarding - in fact, it can end up showing that the religious field loses control over its own symbolic capital and that marketing increases its domination, even on the production of symbols. This article proposes a typology of relations between religion and advertising, by analyzing cases of conflicts, real or potential, recently raised in the Italian context. A key element is the consensus on the consumption of the goods produced, that both the religious field and economic field appear to have, think they have, or recognize that the opposing field has.