Description
The presentation looks at contemporary spiritual practices in Neo-Pentecostalism and Tibetan Buddhist networks in the West. Although these two religious movements could be seen as covering opposite ends of the contemporary religious/spiritual spectrum, they share surprising similarities. Tibetan Buddhist practitioners as well as Neo-pentecostal Christians engage in comparable discourses about the self and religio-therapeutic practices albeit framed in the particular vocabulary of their respective religious fields. In my paper I will argue that these similarities can be explained by the fact that contemporary Western Buddhists and Neo-pentecostals inhabit the same social and material world, a world that structures and simultaneously is structured by hegemonic knowledge regimes and practices of contemporary Western liberal societies, such as consumer capitalism, the regime of the self, and therapeutic culture. Several sociologists have argued that the modern discourse of the self naturalizes the idea of an autonomous self and nourishes the need for self-development and self-fulfillment supported by the therapeutic ethos of contemporary consumer societies (e.g., Giddens 1991; Rose 1991, 1996; Illouz 2008). Both my examples will show that assumptions about the modern self and personhood function as interfaces to the contemporary discourse on religion and spirituality in a market where the naturalized need for self-development and self-transformation becomes commodified. We will see that such therapeutic ‘technologies of the self’ are not only provided by secular counselors, but also by New Age spiritualities, Buddhist experts, and Christian pastors alike. The proliferation and popularity of such offers indicates that these are diversified answers to the naturalized and marketed need for self-development in contemporary societies.| Period | 8 Jun 2022 |
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| Event title | Conference: "Born Again Selves: New Religious Movements and the Norms of Belief" Max Weber Kolleg, Universität Erfurt |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Erfurt, GermanyShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |