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First published online April 1, 2009

Strategy in a Religious Network: A Bourdieuian Critique of the Sociology of Spirituality

Matthew Wood and Christopher BunnView all authors and affiliations
Volume 43, Issue 2
https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038508101166

Abstract

Within the sociology of religion there has emerged a discourse on spirituality that views contemporary developments as involving the assertion of individuals' self-authority.This perspective's theoretical roots have been persistently criticized for their conceptualization of agency; in contrast, this article draws on Bourdieu's concept of strategy to examine action in an English religious network of the sort often classified as `New Age'. In particular, one informant is discussed in order to provide focus for an understanding of what Lahire calls sociology at the level of the individual. Her actions, better explained as strategic improvisations than as choices made on the basis of self-authority, help to illuminate the peculiarities of this religious setting, which is characterized in terms of `nonformativeness'. By emphasizing social contextualization, this approach addresses people's meaningful actions in a way that may be applied not only more widely within the religious field but also in other fields of action.

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1.
1 Bourdieu's interest in structure distinguishes his understanding of strategy from those of De Certeau (1988) and Foucault (1980), as well as the conception of practice in rational choice theory (Stark, 1999). Furthermore, Bourdieu's approach highlights how York's (1997: 414) interpretation of `New Age identity', as characterized by `Self-Selection' rather than `Selfauthority', also rests upon an essentialized understanding of subjective intentionality.
2.
2 Pascalian Meditations, for example, draws attention to a more complex view of habitus (Bourdieu, 2000: 64, 100, 144, 157—63).
3.
3 All names are pseudonyms.
4.
4 Hanegraaff (1996) discusses the emergence of the movement primarily from western esotericism; Theosophy emerged from spiritualism in the last quarter of the 19th century, marking a shift away from popular Christian interpretations in terms of the deceased towards an elitist and partly eastern-informed understanding in terms of higher beings or Ascended Masters.
5.
5 Channellers claim to receive messages from evolutionarily advanced, non-physical beings, especially by means of possession in which they speak or write through the channeller (Brown, 1997).
6.
6 This application of Bourdieu's concepts to the religious field concurs with Verter's (2003) view that it is his mature theory that is useful, rather than his earlier study of religion (Bourdieu, 1991[1971]) that treats the field in terms of immobility and domination. For applications of Bourdieu to other areas of the religious field, see Coleman (2000) and Rey (2008).
7.
7 At the time popularly known for his controversial views, such as in The Truth Vibrations (Icke, 1991) which claims to be based on psychic communications received from highly evolved beings.
8.
8 Whilst many scholars have asserted commonality amongst such phenomena in terms of discourse, as in Heelas's (1996: 18—29) `lingua franca' of `Self-spirituality' (see also Aupers and Houtman, 2006; Hanegraaff, 1996), such assertions are highly selective, applicable to a wide variety of other religious settings, and based primarily on published literature (as already shown regarding the supposed discourse of spirituality).
9.
9 Such nonformativeness is different from the cultural `omnivorousness' that Skeggs (2004: 144—5) associates with the new petite bourgeoisie's competitiveness, since (as discussed) it lacks that element.
10.
10 Sutcliffe (2006) argues that participants in such groups are characterized by a common habitus of `seekership', but the lack of detail about specific dispositions renders this interpretation unconvincing. Furthermore, he repeats the mistake of other New Age studies in adopting a description sometimes used by insiders as an explanation of their social practice.
11.
11 The waxing and waning of the popularity of religious knowledge and practices in these scenes relates in part to popular literature — for example, James Redfield's (1994) international bestseller The Celestine Prophecy and national magazines such as the UK's Kindred Spirit — and the entertainment media, for example, the film Stargate (released in 1994 by MGM).
12.
12 Whilst ethnographic studies of congregations (Becker, 1999; Dillon, 1999) and pagan groups (Greenwood, 2000; Magliocco, 2004) have explored the presence of multiple authorities, they demonstrate that these do not tend to relativize each other, but instead have a formative effect. Different factions share and thus mutually support a common identity and set of practices (particularly through ritualization) relatively unaffected by significant differences. In fact, these studies demonstrate that such contestations exist precisely because of such commonality (Yamane, 2007: 45).

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Published In

Volume 43, Issue 2
Pages: 286 - 303
Article first published online: April 1, 2009
Issue published: April 2009

Keywords

  1. authority
  2. Bourdieu
  3. choice
  4. New Age movement
  5. spirituality
  6. secularization

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Authors

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Matthew Wood
Queen's University Belfast, [email protected]
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Christopher Bunn
University of Cambridge, [email protected]
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