Full Description
Secular Societies, Spiritual Selves? is the first volume to address the gendered intersections of religion, spirituality and the secular through an ethnographic approach.
The book examines how 'spirituality' has emerged as a relatively 'silent' category with which people often signal that they are looking for a way to navigate between the categories of the religious and the secular, and considers how this is related to gendered ways of being and relating. Using a lived religion approach the contributors analyse the intersections between spirituality, religion and secularism in different geographical areas, ranging from the Netherlands, Portugal and Italy to Canada, the United States and Mexico. The chapters explore the spiritual experiences of women and their struggle for a more gender equal way of approaching the divine, as well as the experience of men and of those who challenge binary sexual identities advocating for a queer spirituality.
This volume will be of interest to anthropologists and sociologists as well as scholars in other disciplines who seek to understand the role of spirituality in creating the complex gendered dynamics of modern societies.
Contents
Introduction: Spirituality, the Third Category in a Gendered Triangle
1. Feminist Spirituality as Lived Religion: How UK Feminists Forge Religio-Spiritual Lives
2. Goddess Spirituality in Italy: Secular and Spiritual - Two Sides of the Same Coin?
3. Healers, Missionaries and Entrepreneurs of the Feminine: The Secularization of Contemporary Women's Spirituality
4. The Sacred Feminine in Mexico's Neopagan Women's Circles
5. The (B)earth of a Gendered Eco-Spirituality: Globally Connected Ethnographies Between Mexico and the European Alps
6. Re-enchanted Selves: An Ethnography of Wild Woman Workshops in Belgium
7. Gendering the Spiritual Marketplace: Public, Private and In-Between
8. "God Wants Spiritual Fruits not Religious Nuts": Spirituality as Middle Way Between Religion and Secularism at the Marian Shrine of Fátima
9. 'A Merely Private Activity': Spiritual Consumerism as a Way to Transform Gendered Relationships to Secular and Religious Authorities
10. Is Yoga a Girl's Thing?: A Case Study on Working Class Men Doing Yoga in Jail
11. "Things I Do Are Manifestations of Love": Queer Religiosities and Secular Spirituality Among Montreal Pagans
Afterword: To the Vagina Triangle and Beyond!
