Situating Spirituality: Context, Practice, and Power - Paperback

by Steensland (Author)

Spirituality is in the spotlight. While levels of religious belief and observance are declining in much of the Western world, the number of people who identify as "spiritual but not religious" is on the rise. Practices such as yoga, meditation, and pilgrimage are surging in popularity.
"Wellness" regimes offer practitioners a lexicon of spirituality and an array of spiritual experiences. Commentators talk of a new spiritual awakening "after religion." And global mobility is generating hybrid practices that blur the lines between religion and spirituality.

The essays collected in Situating Spirituality: Context, Practice, and Power examine not only individual engagements with spirituality, but they show how seemingly personal facets of spirituality, as well as definitions of spirituality itself, are deeply shaped by religious, cultural, and political
contexts. The volume is explicitly cross-national and comparative. The contributors are leading scholars of major global regions: North America, Central America, East Asia, South Asia, Africa and the African Diaspora, Western Europe, and the Middle East. They study not only Christian, Jewish, and
Islamic societies, but also non-Abrahamic societies with native as well as transnational sacred traditions.

Author Biography

Brian Steensland is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). He is the author of The Failed Welfare Revolution: America's Struggle Over Guaranteed Income and co-editor of The New Evangelical Social Engagement.

Jaime Kucinskas is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Hamilton College. She is the author of The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing from the Inside Out (Oxford, 2019).

Anna Sun is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University. She is the author of Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities.