New Age Capitalism

Lau, Kimberly J.

doi:10.9783/9781512820010

Cited by 64 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…They write, "with the emergence of capitalist spirituality the freedom of the individual to express their inner nature through 'spirituality' becomes subordinated to the demands of corporate business culture and the needs of a flexible competitive economy" (45). Consequently, Carrette and King, along with many others (Bauman, 1998;Lau, 2000;Redden, 2002;Jameson, 1991;Possamai, 2003;Martin, 2014;González, 2015), argue that self-spirituality is a byproduct of late capitalism.…”

Section: Claim 2: Self-spirituality Is Socially Insignificantmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite there being proponents and pundits championing both sides of the debate, the critics have been both louder and more forceful. From Robert Bellah and co-authors' (1985) conflation of spirituality with American individualism in its worst form; to Kimberley Lau's (2000) decrying the consumeristic ethos she views as the essence of what goes by the name of "New Age spirituality"; to Steve Bruce's (2002) characterization of individual religion/spirituality as "impotent"; to Jeremy Carrette and Richard King's (2005) pronouncement that spirituality is "the psychological sedative for a culture that is in the process of rejecting values of community and social justice" (21); to Craig Martin's (2014) deeming spirituality "the opiate of the bourgeoisie"-there is no shortage of concern over the social and political implications of self-spirituality within the academy (and beyond).…”

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confidence: 99%

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On the Politics of Self-spirituality

Watts

2018

Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses

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In the last quarter century, a steadily increasing number of North Americans, when asked their religious affiliation, have self-identified as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). Charles Taylor argues that the popularity of “spirituality” is the result of the “massive subjective turn of modern culture”; while Paul Heelas has deemed this new religious form, “self-spirituality.” Many scholars have taken a critical stance toward this recent cultural development, positing that self-spirituality is a byproduct of the self-obsessed and individualistic culture which saturates the West, or that spirituality, at its worst, is simply a rebranding of religion in order to support consumer culture and the ideology of late capitalism. In this article, I seek to problematize these accounts. Drawing from qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews with Canadian millennials who self-identify as SBNR, I will argue that self-spirituality is less individualistic and narcissistic than these scholars assert, its relationship to late capitalism is better understood as ambivalent, rather than congenial, and due to their methodological prejudices these critiques of self-spirituality are inadequate to analyse and understand the politics of self-spirituality.

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Section: Claim 2: Self-spirituality Is Socially Insignificantmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

On the Politics of Self-spirituality

Watts

2018

Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses

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“…This analysis illustrates the logic of what Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead call (via Carson McCullers [1973]) the "we of me" in the "spiritual milieu" (2005: 11), which has grown out of modern culture's "subjective turn" (Taylor, 1991), and does so in a way that strengthens the recent argument of Galen Watts (2018) that "self-spirituality is less individualistic and narcissistic" or "congenial" to late capitalism than scholars (e.g. Carrette and King, 2005;Lau, 2000;Martin, 2014) typically portray it. 2 In analyzing qualitative interview data from "spiritual but not religious" Canadian millennials, Watts (2018) concluded that individuals can and do take the language, structure, and motivation to work for social change from self-spirituality's combination of "perennialism (the notion that, at their core, all religions are the same), bricolage (the practice of drawing from multiple religious traditions in constructing one's spirituality), and .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“A Cult of Cookie Bakers”: The Spiritual Qualities of Youth Social Justice Organization Free the Children

Funnell-Kononuk

Mosurinjohn

2019

Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses

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This article analyzes the growing youth social justice initiative Free the Children/ME to WE as a kind of “spiritual movement” by demonstrating how the discourses utilized by participants and authorities resemble both the discourse of self-spirituality, as found among actual millennials, and the discourse of youth spirituality found in the developmental sciences literature. Building on previous research in which we characterized this family of organizations as a “new secular spiritual movement,” (Mosurinjohn and Funnell-Kononuk, 2017). we situate the phenomenological experience of its distinctive “WE spirituality” in the landscape of contemporary Western spirituality. Following on arguments that the politics of self-spirituality are more social change-oriented than previously acknowledged, we illuminate the logics of a spiritual movement that develops the “me” of the individual self into a part of the “we” of an imagined global community, by making spirituality coextensive with social civic engagement.

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“…Some have become public figures in their own right, routinely profiled in the broader media and held up as exemplars of feminine success in women's magazines and business journals alike, where they are lauded for building 'empires' and encouraging an otherwise recalcitrant British populace to embrace 'healthy eating'. Shaped by the legacies of West Coast counterculture (Ingram, 2020), New Age orientalism (Lau, 2000) and the alternative food movement (Guthman, 2011), the 'whole food' and 'plant-based' dietary ethos they promote is nothing new. Nevertheless, it has been mainstreamed to an unprecedented extent in the UK in recent years, fed in no small part by the aspirational economies of social media.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

By, for, with women? On the politics and potentialities of wellness entrepreneurship

O'Neill

2023

The Sociological Review

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Based in original ethnographic research, this article examines the motivations and experiences of those seeking to forge careers in the UK’s burgeoning wellness industry. As a movement-market centred around health-enhancement and encompassing a broad array of practices and products, this industry has recently grown to prominence in Britain, driven significantly by the aspirational economies of social media. While the promise of wellness is manifold – including, most obviously, that of health and well-being – here I examine its operation in relation to questions of work and employment. Drawing on interviews with those who already work or aspire to work in wellness – generally on a self-employed basis, but often operating under the sign of a more glamorised ‘entrepreneurship’ – I explore why women are drawn to participate in this arena in a professional as well as personal capacity. I focus in particular on the lure of wellness work among participants who had already established careers in other settings, for whom the transition entails relinquishing relative economic security to instead pursue an inherently risky pathway. This research reflects critically on existing accounts of ‘passionate work’ by arguing that wellness entrepreneurship functions as both an individual and collective endeavour. In doing so it grapples with the politics and potentialities of wellness entrepreneurship as a feminised mode of self-employment, situating this analysis within the continuing aftermath of feminism in an era marked by new feminist visibilities and discourses of female empowerment.

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New Age Capitalism

Cited by 64 publications

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On the Politics of Self-spirituality

On the Politics of Self-spirituality

“A Cult of Cookie Bakers”: The Spiritual Qualities of Youth Social Justice Organization Free the Children

By, for, with women? On the politics and potentialities of wellness entrepreneurship

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