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An Understanding of the New Age Through the Lens of an Embodied Experience of the Sacred
An Understanding of the New Age Through the Lens of an Embodied Experience of the Sacred2019 •
The thesis titled An Understanding of the New Age Through the Lens of an Embodied Experience of the Sacred is a writing of anthropological character which aims to explain how the New Age phenomenon manifests in the context of globalization. From an Anthropological stance, the New Age is a cultural phenomenon of religious connotation. It is part of a process of Globalization of Religion (Csordas 2009) in the context of a Global Religious System (Beyer 2006). The New Age phenomenon is embodied throughout the deterritorialized trajectories of its spiritual foragers (De la Torre 2013) in a quest for an experience of the Sacred as Otherness. The consequence of these trajectories is an intertwined rhizome (Deleuze & Guattari 1987) configured by a complex interconnection of eclectic elements gravitating around the experience of the sacred in a global society. These concepts are used to demonstrate how the New Age manifests in the embodied experience of persons in concrete local contexts, maintaining a constant dialogue with the global dimension of the New Age. Three particular cases are analyzed regarding this objective: Aztec Dancing (Olivas 20014), Neomayanism and Deoceltism (2016,) and Neoshamanism (Itzhak 2015).
Turner/The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion
Globalization and the Sociology of Religion2010 •
... At the oppo-site poles of the narratives of a world engaged in a global path ... The worldwide diffusion of Tibetan Buddhism can also be justified in similar terms (Obadia 2001 ... are globalizing, others are adjusting themselves to global settings, and the New Age movement, torn ...
In this article, the authors seek to explore spiritual diversity as seen in two contemporary movements that arose in the wake of the New Age and the “2012 Phenomenon”: Mexican neo-Mayanism and French celtic neo-shamanism. They examine the relationship between the dual mobility of leaders (geographic and spiritual) and the hybridization of symbolic references by focusing on the set of objects, accessories and ritual clothing used by adherents in spiritual practice. Their analyses are based on ethnographic research carried out in France and Mexico between 2012 and 2014. The objects are analyzed in terms of symbolic rearrangements, identity innovation and coexistence of referential systems (glocalization). The authors’ analyses reveal that despite the globalized character of the New Age, the practices and discourses of these groups are heavily influenced by the transnational life pathways of their leaders.
New Age in Latin America. Popular varitions and ethinic appropriations.
New Age in Latin America Popular Variations and Ethnic Appropriations Renée de la TorreThe book starts with two chapters of theoretical reflections. They share the initial need to provide a framework for theoretical discussion of the term New Age. However the hold different positions. In the first chapter, Indo and Afro American Religiosities, and circuits od New Age Spirituality, Renée de la Torre revises the various definitions of the term New Age. The author highlights the processes and historical comings and goings that have permeated and molded different varieties of New Age, both in Europe and in Latin America. Due to the changing, eclectic and diverse character of New Age, she has chosen a working definition, to conceive of it as a matrix of meaning, in the other words a framework of interpretation, based on the holistic principle that allows connections and analogies to be established between the part and the whole, the self and the cosmos, ego and mother earth, the human body and the noosphere.
2010 •
In retrospect, the abstract should be read something like this: WHAT’S NEW ABOUT NEW AGE GURUS? proposes that well before the rise of those spiritual teachers dubbed “New Age gurus” in Indian press, there was precedent for innovation and breaking with “tradition” within Indian religious traditions. Thus, innovation for Indian gurus is – in a sense – following tradition. The essay also serves as somewhat of a literature review on modern/contemporary gurus, pre 2010, when it was published.
2017 •
Om transcultural circulation of religion and spirituality
Unlike the spectacular diffusion of modern Western sporting forms, Eastern movement forms (martial arts, Eastern dance, Yoga, meditation, Tai Chi Chuan, Qigong, etc.) have been quietly entering the fabric of everyday Western life over the past few decades. Adopting a structurationist approach that seeks to retain relationships between macro-, meso- and micro-levels of culture, this article considers data gathered from a range of long-term Western practitioners of a variety of Eastern movement forms in juxtaposition to broader media and documentary data also gathered on these practices. The analysis explores three Western social forces (Orientalism, reflexive modernization and commodification.) identified as acting on these movement forms in ways that intensify the process of (re)invention of tradition with particular transformative tensions. In conclusion, we identify three dispositions (preservationism, conservationism, and modernization) emerging from our analysis of these movement forms that seem to drive how individuals respond to the transformative Western social forces highlighted.
Temenos 46:1, 2010
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Nancy Christie & Michael Gauvreau (eds), The Sixties and Beyond: Dechristianization in North America and Western Europe, 1945-2000
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Daniel Enstedt, Göran Larsson, and Teemu T. Mantsinen (eds), Handbook of Leaving Religion, Leiden and Boston, Brill, pp. 231-241
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