Are We All Spiritual?: A Comparative Perspective on the Appropriation of a New Concept of Spirituality
‘I'm spiritual - not religious’ has become a key expression of a new form of globalized religion focusing on a specific notion of spirituality, signifying a universal human essence, located deep inside each individual as a potential for wellbeing and personal transformation. The message is: spi...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
2011
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| In: |
Journal for the Study of Spirituality
Year: 2011, Volume: 1, Issue: 2, Pages: 249-268 |
| Further subjects: | B
global versus local contexts
B Spirituality B Sweden B inner potential B Canadian Mi'kmaq |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | ‘I'm spiritual - not religious’ has become a key expression of a new form of globalized religion focusing on a specific notion of spirituality, signifying a universal human essence, located deep inside each individual as a potential for wellbeing and personal transformation. The message is: spirituality unites us into a single humanity, while religion, with its dogma and rituals, separates us. This new concept of spirituality works mostly in symbiosis with neoliberal ideas about the market, where neo-spiritual therapists and coaches offer to assist individuals in finding and developing their spirituality, or ‘inner potential’. In this article, I suggest that this contemporary view of spirituality is produced within a particular social context, and is thus not self-evidently adopted in other contexts. To illustrate this, I draw on my experience of fieldwork in Canadian Mi'kmaq reserves and examples of contemporary spirituality, mainly from Sweden. I also consider whether Mi'kmaq notions of spirituality are congruent with those of the ‘new spirituality’. |
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| ISSN: | 2044-0251 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the Study of Spirituality
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1558/jss.v1i2.249 |