Abstract
Using the analytical lens provided by late-modern social theorists (e.g. Bauman, Beck, Bourdieu and Giddens), the author explores the hermeneutical value of regarding particular forms of new religiosity/spirituality as typically commoditized expressions of contemporary consumer society. Regarded as modes of self-assertion, new spiritualities are first held to promote the cosmic aggrandizement of the late-modern self. Second, new spiritualities may be seen as discontinuous with certain contemporary dynamics and, thereby, to comprise a reflexively orchestrated rejection of modern consumer society. Synthesizing these opposites, it is argued that new religiosities neither wholly affirm nor entirely reject late-modern society and might best be regarded as forms of “mystified consumption”.
Introduction
This chapter contributes to ongoing discussions in respect of religion and consumer society by engaging new spiritualities through the analytical lens provided by theorists of late-modernity such as Bauman, Beck, Bourdieu and Giddens. In respect of new spirituality, what follows need not apply to all forms of new religiosity and, where applicable, does not necessarily apply in the same way. In respect of “late-modernity”, the term signals a belief that contemporary urban-industrial society is not—as some would have it—in radical discontinuity with what has gone before. Rather, contemporary society is held to be constituted by the radicalization of the same kinds of processes (e.g. individualization, detraditionalization, and pluralization) responsible for the emergence and consolidation of modern urban-industrial society as it has occurred over the course of the last 150 years. As contemporary late-modern society is, at least to a meaningful extent, in continuity with what has gone before, critical analysis of ongoing socio-cultural transformations assumes that we are not witnessing a fundamental break with established processes of modernity but rather a series of variations on the modern theme. Relative to what has gone before, contemporary socio-cultural transformation is, then, understood to be more a difference in degree than a difference in kind.
Ulrich Beck argues that the late-modern social landscape is, among other things, characterized by a tendency to “compel people—for the sake of their own material survival—to make themselves the center of their own planning and conduct of life [… to make the individual] conceive of himself or herself as the center of action, as the planning office with respect to his/her own biography, abilities, orientations, relationships and so on” (1992: 88, 135). With the current treatment of new spiritualities in mind, one might justifiably complement the phrase “material survival” with terms such as “psychological health”, “emotional safety” or “spiritual well-being”. For the sake of their “spiritual well-being”, then, people are or feel compelled to make themselves the centre around which all else is held to revolve.
Although not agreeing with everything Beck says, I do believe that many forms of new spirituality have at their core a conception of the self as “the centre of their own planning and conduct of life”. Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that a fundamental concern of much new religious discourse is the “cosmic aggrandizement” of the late-modern individual. By “cosmic self-aggrandizement” I mean the discursive universalization of the individual and his/her reach, which is achieved, among other things, by the rhetorical conflation of self-knowledge with universal comprehension and self-governance with cosmic mastery (Dawson, 2007). To this extent, then, I hold the overwhelming majority of new religiosity to be in keeping with the modern paradigm’s elevated estimation of the individual as a “sovereign self” (Taylor, 1992).
The sovereign self of the modern paradigm, however, traverses a late-modern terrain in which the radicalization of processes such as individualization, detraditionalization, pluralization, commoditization, and globalization has reshaped the contemporary social landscape. Whilst to a large extent in continuity with the sovereign self of classical modernity, the cosmically-aggrandized self championed by new religiosity likewise exhibits a range of characteristics typical of the late-modern environment through which she now moves and by which she is now shaped. The most noteworthy of these characteristics are: a holistic worldview in which a universal force underlies and unites every individual component of existence—such that particular beliefs and practices are but relative (and, thereby, interchangeable) expressions of the cosmic whole; an individualistic emphasis upon the self as the ultimate arbiter of religious authority and the primary agent of spiritual transformation; an instrumentalized religiosity driven by the goal of absolute self-realization—to which end an eclectic range of spiritual knowledge and mystical techniques is employed; an expressive demeanour through which inner states of being are externalized by verbal and practical means tending toward the dramatic; a meritocratic-egalitarianism which is both inherently suspicious of religious hierarchy and expectant of just rewards for efforts expended; and an immanentist spirituality which—alongside the avowal of transcendent transformations and rewards (e.g. reincarnation and cosmic merit)—valorizes the pragmatic implications of self-realization (e.g. psychological and material well-being).
Together, these factors combine to engender a religious worldview in which the individual has the right, if not the duty, to pursue his absolute self-realization through any available means and at any possible opportunity. Such is the self-orientated nature of this pursuit that prevailing narratives and customary practices are evaluated relative to their perceived support for or hindrance of individual fulfilment. In the same vein, the enchantment of the world wrought by the combination of these characteristics involves, among other things, the fusion of the experiential realms traditionally designated the “material” and the “spiritual”—spheres regarded by modernity as otherwise discrete. The collapse of modernity’s spiritual–material dichotomy occurs because each realm is no longer regarded as categorically distinct from the other. Instead, each is treated as a differentiated and thereby contingent representation of an all-embracing and absolute, overarching reality. Mediated by the overarching ubiquity of the Whole, each sphere is internally related to the other such that what belongs to the material pertains to the spiritual and vice-versa. As the material realm is sacralized and the spiritual arena materialized, the spiritual sphere is rendered immanent by its grounding in material processes and the material realm is valorized as a means to spiritual realization.
An important adjunct to the elision of the material and spiritual spheres of existence is the increased estimation of the body and its physical environment as principal loci of spiritual fulfilment. This, in turn, requires that the material aspects of life which nurture and allow the body to flourish become significant means of spiritual expression. Underwritten by and expressive of late-modern processes, this line of reasoning functions as a kind of commodicy in which “the things of this world” (e.g. material success and psychophysical well-being) become both a medium for and a barometer of spiritual well-being. (1) As a consequence, material goods are no longer treated, as with traditional spirituality, as potential impediments to spiritual realization but are instead regarded as expressive of, if not intrinsic to, the success of the spiritual quest. As with Weber’s understanding of Calvinist preoccupations with visible “signs of election” (1992), the material well-being which is so central to contemporary consumer society resonates directly with new religiosity’s articulation of the cosmic aggrandizement of the late-modern self.
We must not, though, fall into the reductionist trap of treating new religious adepts as mere cultural dopes, washed along by the flows and currents of late-modern social processes. For, it cannot be ignored that for many adherents of new spiritualities, the discourse of new religiosity articulates a self-conscious rejection of what are held to be typically modern socio-cultural phenomena. Immorality, shallow positivism, violence (domestic and political), environmental degradation, and lack of respect for non-mainstream opinion are just a few of the many tropes employed by new religious practitioners to underwrite their critique of “the system” and all that allegiance to it entails (Dawson, 2008). Indeed, one of the most recurrent themes cited by new religious adepts in support of their rejection of modernity is that of its unrelenting materialism. Modern society, it is said, is acquisitive, avaricious and commoditized. Modern society is criticized, then, because it holds self-realization to be attained through the pursuit, appropriation and consumption of goods external to the self. In reflexive contrast to modern materialism and its commoditization of human existence, new spirituality employs a process of re-signification which inverts contemporary value systems. Hierarchizing the inner precincts of the individual over the outer environs of society, this re-signification posits the privatized interior of the self as the preferred vale of soul-making. To this extent, then, new era spirituality’s valorization of inner-orientated significance underscores its anti-consumerist credentials in that it embodies the reflexive disavowal of neo-liberalism’s consumo, ergo sum.
In view of its discursive rejection of mainstream consumer society, new spirituality may well be regarded, in Beck’s terms, as a highly subjectivized response to late-modernity’s compulsion to conceive of the self as the centre of planning and action. There is perhaps some justification for arguing that new religiosity, by making the inner precincts of the self its preferred vale of soul-making, at least makes a virtue out of necessity. There are those, however, who would disagree; arguing instead that the privatized preoccupations and subjectivized celebrations of new spirituality serve only to transform a late-modern failing (that of rampant individualism) into the full-blown vice of “subjectivity fetishism” (Bauman, 2007: 14; see also Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Bauman, 2005).
Muddying the Waters
Not least in view of the preponderance of middle-class practitioners of new religiosity, it would be naive to suggest that the discursive disavowal of mainstream society equates with wholesale disengagement from social processes or that it amounts to the complete rejection of contemporary modes of consumption. There are shades of grey here, as new religious discourse also comprises elements (reflexive or otherwise) of accommodation to and affirmation of contemporary social processes (see Wallis, 1984).
Let me give three brief examples of its affirmation of contemporary societal dynamics. First, new religiosity may be regarded as an aesthetic of “distinction”. Within this aesthetic of distinction, the symbolic capital which new religious adepts believe to be accrued by their reflexively nurtured counter-cultural identity is strategically employed (by virtue of its relative “rarity”) to distinguish urban middle-class practitioners from the “vulgar” masses (Bourdieu, 1984)—be they the vulgar masses of mainstream religion or the vulgar masses of secular society. A second example of new spirituality’s affirmation of mainstream consumer culture can be offered with reference to the sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit correlation of spiritual status and material well-being. Although, for the most part, far from the full-blown prosperity gospel of neo-Pentecostalism, new spirituality often assumes an elevated standard of living to reinforce claims to an enhanced spiritual standing. Whether regarded as being inherited from a past life (as “cosmic merit”) or acquired in this one (as “blessing”), spiritual authority is enhanced by material possession. As with so many walks of modern life, new religiosity allows for the direct transposition of economic capital into symbolic capital. A third example treats new spirituality as a form of self-consumption. Here, the new religious quest for spiritual realization represents an interiorized version of what Giddens regards as the late-modern preoccupation with the self as “project” (1991). New religiosity is thereby regarded as a spiritualized manifestation of what Bauman terms “the body’s new primacy” (2000: 184). In these terms, the transformative project made possible by new religious practical knowledge is an interiorized “reflexive biography” (Beck, 1992: 135) equivalent to today’s gym routines, dietary disciplines and plastic-surgical solutions. Taking these examples cumulatively, new spirituality may be regarded as something which, almost despite itself, ends up buying into and thereby reproducing the very late-modern dynamics that it reflexively purports to eschew.
Pursuing a slightly different tack, new era spirituality might be viewed more as an accommodation to than an affirmation of late-modern dynamics. In this respect we might regard new era spirituality as, for example, an accommodation to the insecurity and resulting anxiety characteristic of contemporary urban-industrial existence (Bauman, 2001; Beck, 1992; Bourdieu, 1998b; Giddens, 1990). Indeed, the doyens of late-modernity would argue that, because of the ever widening gap between inherited expectation and actual state of affairs, this insecurity and anxiety is heightened for the hyper-reflexive middle-classes, who make up the overwhelming majority of new religionists (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994). In this line of thought, and in contrast to the reflexive disavowal noted above, the re-signification wrought by new era spirituality does not articulate a full-blown rejection of commoditized existence. Rather, the act of re-signification (in which inner goods are hierarchized over outer ones) underwrites a kind of mystified consumption, which informs the new religious commodicy by coupling symbolic denial with practical enjoyment. The symbolic denial of ultimate value to material goods acts as a kind of psychological prophylaxis, which guards against the anxiety-inducing implications of late-modern précarité. It does so by regarding the things of this world as secondary and thereby expendable adjuncts to the spiritually fulfilled life. In practice, however, the enjoyment of material possessions by middle-class new era adepts continues to be just that—enjoyment. Caught between the Scylla of consumerist culture (“to be is to consume”) and the Charybdis of late-modern insecurity (“nothing is guaranteed”)—to borrow a phrase from Bauman—new era practitioners “hedge their bets and insure their actions against the pranks of fate” (2007: 86). In valorizing the realization of the inner self over the enjoyment of material goods, new era spirituality does not disavow the latter in favour of the former. Rather, by making inner fulfilment the centrepiece of its narrative, new era discourse downgrades material comfort to the status of optional, but not unwelcome, extra. Precarious by nature, worldly goods are welcome if they come along but it’s not the end of world if they don’t.
Conclusion
By and large, late-modern theorists argue that the individualizing dynamics of late-modern society have set its citizens an unachievable task. On the one hand, late-modern citizens are imbued with a sense of individual responsibility for all that happens to and around them in respect of private and professional, family and social, and local, national and (increasingly) global affairs. As Beck puts it, the “contradictions and conflicts” arising from these matters are “dumped at the feet of the individual” who is left “with the well intentioned invitation to judge all of this critically on the basis of his or her own notions” (1992: 137). On the other hand, and having imbued the newly emancipated individual with a sense of duty to resolve these matters, late-modernity fails to deliver the necessary tools and support by which this new found responsibility can be met. According to Bauman, there is a wide and growing gap between the conditions of individuals de jure [i.e. what is expected of them] and their chances to become individuals de facto [i.e. what they are actually able to achieve] (2000: 38).
For these authors, the aporia formed by the shortfall of de facto possibility relative to de jure expectation can be resolved only by the overhaul of societal institutions and the reclamation of the public sphere as a fully functioning vale of citizen-making. Although mindful of the contribution of micro-dynamics, the prescribed solution is ultimately one of mid-range and macro-structural transformation. Not so for many forms of new spirituality. Faced with the intractable irony of heightened expectation versus what are felt as progressively precarious prospects, new religiosity by and large eschews social-political activism as a viable means of solving this dilemma. Unable or unwilling to entertain social-political activism as a remedy for society’s ills—or simply indifferent to the idea—much new-era spirituality posits an uncompromisingly “biographical solution” to late-modernity’s “systemic contradictions” (Beck, 1992: 137). Furthermore, for many new religiosities this “biographical solution” involves the consumption of much that our late-modern, commoditized society has to offer. Of course, this biographical solution smacks to some of narcissistic, if not solipsistic, self-preoccupation. To others, though, it may be read, if not as a means of resistance or survival, at least as a holding pattern until something better comes along.