No abstract

From its beginnings in the 1960s up to the present, the New Age movement has undergone considerable change. Originally, it was a counter-cultural movement, interacting with other counter-cultural movements of that time, such as the ecology, hippie, and commune movements. During the last decades, spiritual and esoteric methods have been popularised and commercialised by an expanding market of literature and workshops. This has made New Age a socially accepted phenomenon and it has thus lost much of its anti-modernist and culture-critical character. In this article, I will show by means of quantitative empirical analyses that in spite of the transformations, the affinity between New Age activism and culture-critical attitudes persists to a certain degree. This is particularly the case for persons aiming at self-perfection by means of spiritual exercises and alternative health methods. Among persons who are primarily interested in esoteric methods, such as astrology and Tarot cards, hedonistic and authoritarian attitudes are, however, more widespread.

No abstract

Zusammenfassung:In der politischen Soziologie wird heute vielfach zwischen einem positiven und einem negativen nationalstolz (Patriotismus und nationalismus) unterschieden. der vorliegende beitrag untersucht, inwieweit sich diese beiden theoretischen Konstrukte anhand der umfragedaten des International Social Survey Programme 2003 empirisch nachweisen lassen. In einem ersten Schritt wird die Kriteriums- und Konstruktvalidität der Skalen "nationalismus" und "Patriotismus" mit den üblichen statistischen Methoden geprüft. Sodann werden die ergebnisse einer in Österreich durchgeführten Probing-Studie präsentiert, in der die befragten nach dem Ausfüllen des ISSP-Fragebogens gebeten wurden, ihre Antworten zu begründen. Abschließend wird versucht, mit einer literatursoziologischen Analyse zusätzliche Aspekte herauszuarbeiten, die beim konventionellen soziologischen Zugang zum Thema meist unbeachtet bleiben. Angesichts der Inkonsistenzen, die sich sowohl in den quantitativen als auch in den qualitativen Analysen, vor allem aber im Vergleich der beiden Analyseebenen zeigen, stellt sich die Frage, ob die polarisierende gegenüberstellung von nationalismus und Patriotismus theoretisch sinnvoll und die üblichen Messungen dieser Konstrukte valide sind.Schlüsselwörter: nationale Identität · nationalstolz · Patriotismus · nationalismus · Probing-Interviews · Methodologie berlin Abstract: In contemporary political sociology, a distinction is often made between "positive" and "negative" national pride (patriotism and nationalism). In this article, we examine whether this theoretical distinction can be verified empirically using data of the International Social Survey Programme 2003. In a first step, statistical tests of criterion validity and construct validity of the "nationalism" and "patriotism" scale are carried out. Thereafter, we present results of a qualitative pilot study in which respondents after having filled out the ISSP-questionnaire were asked to explain their answers and how they understood the questions. Finally, we tried to identify additional aspects of the topic which are, as a rule, not considered in conventional analyses, and to clarify parts of its conceptual logic by using prose fiction as a relevant source. Considering the inconsistencies both in the quantitative and in the qualitative analyses, the question arises whether a strict distinction between nationalism and patriotism is theoretically meaningful and whether the customary way of measuring these constructs is empirically valid.

No abstract