Description
Book SynopsisNew Age and holistic beliefs and practices - sometimes called the "new spirituality" - are widely distributed across modern global society. The fluid and popular nature of new age makes these movements a very challenging field to understand using traditional models of religious analysis. Rather than treating new age as an exotic specimen on the margins of 'proper' religion, "New Age Spirituality" examines these movements as a form of everyday or lived religion. The book brings together an international range of scholars to explore the key issues: insight, healing, divination, meditation, gnosis, extraordinary experiences, and interactions with gods, spirits and superhuman powers. Combining discussion of contemporary beliefs and practices with cutting-edge theoretical analysis, the book repositions new age spirituality at the forefront of the contemporary study of religion.
Trade Review"The book moves the study of new age from the margins of the comparative study of religion. It resists the claim that religion must be institutional, yet similarly resists the idea that diffuse and individualistic phenomena, like new age, lack social and historical dimensions. New age - examined methodologically and discovered in rich empirical data - is revealed as religion, not fringe but central." - Carole M. Cusack, University of Sydney "Acumen Publishing continues to lead the way in the academic study of the overlapping fields of paganism, occultism, and New Age with this new collection - By treating New Age as 'core' or 'elementary' religion and by linking contemporary studies of New Age to classic literature on religion, the book has the potential to open new avenues of analysis and critique in anthropology." - Anthropology Review Database
Table of ContentsIntroduction: 'All mixed up': thinking about religion in relation to new age spiritualities, Ingvild Salid Gilhus and Steven J. Sutcliffe; PART I: RETHINKING NEW AGE SPIRITUALITIES; 1. New Age, World Religions and Elementary Forms, Steven J. Sutcliffe; 2. 'All over the place': The Contribution of New Age to a Spatial Model of Religion, Ingvild Salid Gilhus; 3. Towards a New Paradigm of Constructing 'Religion': New Age Data and Unbounded Categories, Liselotte Frisk; 4. On Transgressing the Secular: Spiritualities of life, Idealism, Vitalism, Paul Heelas; 5. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Organizational Forms of 'Unorganized Religion', Ann Taves and Michael Kinsella; PART II: COMPARING NEW AGE BELIEFS AND PRACTICES; 6. Narrow New Age and Broad Spirituality: A Comprehensive Schema and a Comparative Analysis, Norichika Horie; 7. Dolphins and other Humans: New Age identities in Comparative Perspective, Mikael Rothstein; 8. New Age, Sami Shamanism and Indigenous Spirituality, Trude Fonneland and Siv Ellen Kraft; 9.
