On the Politics of Self-spirituality: A Canadian Case Study

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 cult...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:  
Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Watts, Galen (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
En cours de chargement...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Publié: Sage [2018]
Dans: Studies in religion
Année: 2018, Volume: 47, Numéro: 3, Pages: 345-372
Sujets non-standardisés:B individual religion
B religion critique
B Spirituality
B Spiritualité
B spiritual but not religious
B spirituel mais pas religieux
B critical religion
B religion individuelle
B milléniaux canadiens
B theory and method in the study of religion
B Canadian millennials
B théorie et méthode d'études de la religion
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Résumé: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.
ISSN:2042-0587
Contient:Enthalten in: Studies in religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/0008429818764114