Ready to Move Along

Abstract

The article describes a set of practices and discourses of the alternative therapeutic circuit and the New Age movement in Buenos Aires that discourage and de-emphasize permanent personal relationships by framing them as the source of unhealthy or unbalancing personal or collective situations. Concurrently, ephemeral social relationships, intra-personal relationships and relations with the cosmos and nature are shown to be associated to health, well being and spiritual development. Based on these findings, it argues that both the habitual practices within the local chapter of this transnational circuit and the discourse of the activists of the New Age movement contribute to the transformation of the culture of educated, middle class Argentines by de-sacralizing lasting and significant personal relationships. It concludes that ephemeral contact with ever-changing protagonistes -even across national boundaries- seems to be the key of disembedding within the alternative circuit and the New Age movement, more so than the mediatization of relationships that the development of communication technologies make possible.