Contemporary Spirituality and the Making of Religious Experience
Studying the Social in an Individualized Religiosity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v6i2.120Keywords:
contemporary spirituality, individualization, methodology, participant observation, religious authority, religious experience, subjectivizationAbstract
The ‘turn to experience’ has been described as one of the most defining characteristics of contemporary religion. Research on religion, and in particular on spirituality, therefore increasingly concentrates on the description of its experiential dimensions. The turn to experience, however, asks for something more than just the observation that a particular dimension (experience) has become of greater value for practitioners of religion. Dimensions which have for a long time been central to the social-scientific study of religion, but are avoided in the practitioners’ discourse and, surprisingly, in the social-scientific discourse as well, such as authority and power, turn out to be of lasting significance in the mediation and construction of religious experience. In this contribution, the authors take the social construction of religious experience in contemporary spirituality as a starting point for a reflection and discussion on the methodological challenges of experiential religion for those engaged in the study of religion.
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References
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Aupers, Stef, and Dick Houtman. 2006. “Beyond the Spiritual Supermarket: The Social and Public Significance of New Age Spirituality,” Journal of Contemporary Religion, 21.2, 201– 22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537900600655894
Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Campbell, Colin. 2007. The Easternization of the West: A Thematic Account of Cultural Change in the Modern Era. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.
De Koning, Martijn. 2008. Zoeken naar een “zuivere” islam: Geloofsbeleving en identiteitsvorming van jonge Marokkaans-Nederlandse moslims. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
Durkheim, Emile. 2001 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Hamilton, Malcolm. 2000. “An Analysis of the Festival for Mind-Body-Spirit, London,” in Steven Sutcliffe and Marion Bowman, eds. Beyond the New Age: Exploring Alternative Spirituality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 188–200.
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 1996. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill.
Heelas, Paul. 1996. The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
—2007. “The Spiritual Revolution of Northern Europe: Personal Beliefs,” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society, 20.1, 1–28.
—2008. Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Heelas, Paul, and Linda Woodhead. 2005. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Houtman, Dick. 2008. Op jacht naar de echte werkelijkheid: Dromen over authenticiteit in een wereld zonder fundamenten. Amsterdam: Pallas/Amsterdam University Press. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5117/9789085550037
Huizer, Gerrit. 1979. “Research-through-Action: Some Practical Experiences with Peasant Organisations,” in Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim, eds. The Politics of Anthropology: From Colonialism and Sexism toward a View from Below. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 395–420.
Janssen, Jacques, and Maerten Prins. 2000. “The Abstract Image of God,” Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 45.109, 31–48.
Janssen, Jacques, Maerten Prins, Cor Baerveldt and Jos Van der Lans. 2000. “The Structure and Variety of Prayer,” Journal of Emperical Theology, 13.2, 29–54. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1163/157092500X00092
Knibbe, Kim E. 2007. Faith in the Familiar: Continuity and Change in Religious Practices and Moral Orientations in the South of Limburg, the Netherlands. Amsterdam: self-published.
Lindquist, Galina. 1995. “Traveling by the Other's Cognitive Maps or Going Native and Coming Back,” Ethnos 60.1/2, 5–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.1995.9981506
Luckmann, Thomas. 1979. “The Structural Conditions of Religious Consciousness in Modern Society,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 6.1/2, 121–37.
Maffesoli, Michel. 1996. The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: SAGE.
Possamai, Adam. 2005. Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-real Document. Bruxelles, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang.
Roeland, Johan, Stef Aupers, Dick Houtman, Martijn De Koning and Ineke Noomen. 2010. “The Quest for Religious Purity in New Age, Evangelicalism and Islam: Religious Renditions of Dutch Youth and the Luckmann Legacy,” Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, 1.1, 289–306. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004187900.i-488.82
St John, Graham, ed. 2009. Rave Culture and Religion. London, New York: Routledge.
Stringer, Martin D. 1999. On the Perception of Worship: The Ethnography of Worship in Four Christian Congregations in Manchester. Birmingham: Birmingham University Press.
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Versteeg, Peter. 2006. “Marginal Christian Spirituality: An Example from a Dutch Meditation Group,” Journal of Contemporary Religion, 21.1, 83–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 13537900500382235
Versteeg, Peter. 2007. “Spirituality on the Margins of the Church: Christian Spiritual Centers in the Netherlands,” in Kieran Flanagan and Peter C. Jupp, eds. A Sociology of Spirituality. Aldershot: Ashgate, 101–14.
Zijderveld, Anton C. 2000. The Institutional Imperative: The Interface of Institutions and Networks. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Published
2012-04-04
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Versteeg, P., & Roeland, J. (2012). Contemporary Spirituality and the Making of Religious Experience: Studying the Social in an Individualized Religiosity. Fieldwork in Religion, 6(2), 120-133. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v6i2.120
