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From Feng Shui to holistic medicine, from aromatherapy candles to yoga weekends, spirituality is big business. It promises to soothe away the angst of modern living and to offer an antidote to shallow materialism.Selling Spirituality is a short, sharp, attack on this fallacy. It shows how spirituality has in fact become a powerful commodity in the global marketplace - a cultural addiction that reflects orthodox politics, curbs self-expression and colonizes Eastern beliefs.Exposing how spirituality has today come to embody the privatization of religion in the modern West, Jeremy Carrette and Richard King reveal the people and brands who profit from this corporate hijack, and explore how spirituality can be reclaimed as a means of resistance to capitalism and its deceptions.
List of contents
Acknowledgements Introduction: Spirituality and the Re-Branding of Religion 1. A Brief History of Spirituality 2. Western Psychology and the Politics of Spirituality 3. Spirituality and the Privatisation of Asian Wisdom Traditions 4. Selling the Soul: The Business of Spirituality Conclusion: Spirituality and Resistance Challenging the Corporate Takeover
About the author
Jeremy Carette is Professor of Philosophy, Religion and Culture at the University of Kent, UK.
Report
'Selling Spirituality acknowledges that contemporary business ethics include a dimension of social responsibility ... In effect, the market has become God. As Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said in his Richard Dimbleby Lecture in 2002: "The very survival of the public sphere, a realm of political argument about vision and education, is going to demand that we take religion a good deal more seriously." Carrette and King show how true this is.' - New Statesman
'In sum, Selling Spirituality offers a provocative thesis ... ' - British Association for the Study of Religions
'The scholarship behind the book is carefully researched and well documented.' - Zadok
'Jeremy Carrette and Richard King break completely new ground... [They] direct our attention to potentially fruitful areas of more systematic investigation [and] illustrate the importance of contemporary religion as a research subject.' - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion
"Clearly written, passionate, and polemical, this book is sure to spark debate in the college classroom."
--Diane Jonte-Pace, Santa Clara University, Religious Studies Review
