Shamanism from Ecuador to Chicago: A Case Study in New Age Ritual Appropriation

This article has three objectives: (1) to give ethnographic accounts of shamanism as practised by the Shuar of Ecuador and of one group of contemporary urban Americans who take the Shuar, as well as other indigenous groups, as their models: (2) to present a critical comparison of those practices; and (3) most importantly, to suggest methodological criteria by which such dislocated ‘neo-shamanisms’ might be usefully distinguished from indigenous shamanisms which are organically related to the surrounding culture and environment.     

Beyond the Spiritual Supermarket: The Social and Public Significance of New Age Spirituality

This article argues that New Age spirituality is substantially less unambiguously individualistic and more socially and publicly significant than today's sociological consensus acknowledges. Firstly, an uncontested doctrine of self-spirituality, characterised by sacralisation of the self and demonisation of social institutions, provides the spiritual milieu with ideological coherence and paradoxically accounts for its overwhelming diversity. Secondly, participants undergo a process of socialisation, gradually adopting this doctrine of self-spirituality and eventually reinforcing it by means of standardised legitimations. Thirdly, spirituality has entered the public sphere of work, aiming at a reduction of employees’ alienation to increase both their happiness and organisational effectiveness. A radical ‘sociologisation’ of New Age research is called for to document how the doctrinal ideal of self-spirituality is socially constructed, transmitted, and reinforced and critically to deconstruct rather than reproduce sociologically naive New Age rhetoric about the primacy of personal authenticity.     

New Spirituality and Social Engagement

New spirituality has often been accused of being egocentric and thus lacking incentives for social engagement. The discussion on this subject is tangled because authors differ in specifying who they are writing about and what the criticism is. After seeking an adequate demarcation of the target group (people involved in new spirituality), we established a concept of social engagement that distinguishes between behavior that is and that is not driven by egocentric motivation. Using measures based on this conceptual model, we surveyed a representative sample of the Dutch population. We found that on most measures people involved in new spirituality are less socially engaged than affiliated or traditionally religious people but more engaged than “secular” people. However, they are more committed to organizations for environmental protection, peace, or animal rights than others. Overall, demographic factors—especially education, age, and gender—are stronger predictors for social engagement than religious and spiritual beliefs, experiences, or practices. The most important spirituality variable that predicts some social engagement measures is connectedness with self, others, and nature.     

Spirituality and Well-Being in Old Age: Exploring the Dimensions of Spirituality in Relation to Late-Life Functioning

A growing body of research connects spirituality with positive late-life functioning. In this research, spirituality is often approached as a single measure in relation to well-being, neglecting its complex nature. Therefore, this study explores whether different dimensions of spirituality contribute uniquely to psychological well-being in advanced age. Results indicated that well-being was positively predicted by spirituality experienced through connectedness with the transcendent and through connectedness with others. Spirituality experienced through connectedness with nature did not predict well-being. These findings highlight the unique influence of each spirituality dimension on well-being as well as the need for a multidimensional approach.     

Spirituality, the New Opiate

This article contrasts traditional spiritualities with those offered by the contemporary New Age movement. An appeal is made for the recovery of the spiritual core in various faith traditions as well as for the necessity of moral growth and social commitment in New Age culture.     

Commodification of seeds

Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics and Plant Evolution, by Cary Fowler. International Studies in Global Change, volume 6. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1994. 352 pages, £33/$50 cloth, £13/$20 pb.     

Commodification and commercial surrogacy

... In this article I shall argue tentatively for the claim that commercial surrogacy should be legally permissible. I am more strongly convinced that a commitment to feminism should not predispose anyone against surrogacy. At least, no arguments offered so far should persuade anyone who is committed to equal rights for women and men and the dismantling of gender-based hierarchies to favor either legal prohibition or moral condemnation of commercial surrogacy.     

The Commodification of Care

This paper discusses the question whether care work for dependent persons (children, the elderly, and disabled persons) may be entrusted to the market; that is, whether and to what extent there is a normative justification for the “commodification of care.” It first proposes a capability theory for care that raises two relevant demands: a basic capability for receiving care and a capability for giving care. Next it discusses and rejects two objections that aim to show that market‐based care undermines the caring motives essential to care, one of them because of its reliance on contracts and the other because of the corrupting influence of payment on motivation. If market care is in principle legitimate, the commodification question transforms into one about the appropriate combinations of market and non‐market care. This question can be answered only by adding an additional complication: care is to be balanced against other activities, most notably work for the labor market. This brings in the problem of gender inequality, since paid work has been traditionally distributed to men and caring activities to women. I show how the capability theory of caring presented in this paper can help resolve the dispute between competing models for balancing work and caring.     

New Grounds for a Re-Union Between Science and Spirituality

Science is recovering its basic mission of making sense of the world. As a search for meaning it is similar to spirituality. The difference between science and spirituality is not in the end they seek, but in the way they seek it. Science uses rational thinking in analyzing and interpreting what experience and experiment discloses, whereas spirituality combines experience with the immediacy of an intuition that speaks to a reality that underlies the world conveyed by the senses. In our day science and spirituality, the great streams of human endeavor, are on a converging course. They share the realization that the cosmos is not a domain of unconscious matter moving about in passive space; it is a dynamic, self-evolving whole, integral at all scales and in all domains. This convergence is important in itself, and it is also important in regard to its consequences. On the one hand it tells us that our intuitive insights about the nature of life and reality are not illusory: they are confirmed in their essence by cutting-edge science. On the other, it offers motivation for entering on a positive path to our common future because wholeness is a defining characteristic of the kind of civilization that could overcome the problems created by the mechanistic manipulative rationality of today's dominant civilization.