Consuming the Self: New Spirituality as “Mystified Consumption”

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”.