Situating Spirituality Context, Practice, and Power

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.

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.

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Introduction
Eminently Social Spirituality: Context, Practice, and Power
Brian Steensland, Jaime Kucinskas, Anna Sun

Part One: Context
1. Social Practices and Cultural Contexts: Framework for the Study of Spirituality
Nancy Ammerman
2. The Gods of Modern Spirituality
Linda Woodhead
3. Fearful Asymmetry: Rethinking the Boundaries between Religion and Spirituality
Anna Sun
4. Trumping the Devil! Engendering the Spirituality of the Marketplace within Africa and the African Diaspora
Afe Adogame
5. Methodological Innovations for the Study of Spirituality
Bradley Wright
6. Shifts in Spiritual and Religious Self-Perceptions in the First Year of College
Alyssa N. Rochenbach
7. Spirituality among African Americans: Inter-Racial and Intra-Racial Differences across Followers of Various Religious Traditions
Jason Shelton

Part Two: Practice
8. The Micro-interactive Order of Spirituality
Michael Pagis
9. Ecstasies: Or, the Limitations of Vanilla Spirituality Studies
Melissa Wilcox
10. Textures of Spirituality in Rural Malawi
Ann Swidler
11. Gifts, Weapons, and Values: The Language of Spirituality in 21st Century Central America
Robert Brenneman

Part Three: Power
12. Everything is Connected: Relocating Spiritual Power from Nature to Society
Stef Aupers
13. Yoga Spirituality in the Context of U.S. Institutions
Candy Gunther Brown
14. Training Spiritual Caregivers: Spirituality in Chaplaincy Programs in Theological Education
Wendy Cage, Beth Stroud, Patrick K. Palmer, George Fitchett, Trace Haythorne, Casey Clevenger
15. Spirituality and Islam: Sufism in Indonesia
Rachel Rinaldo
16. The Transmission of Spirituality in Broader Landscapes of Power
Jaime Kucinskas

Conclusion
17. Three Questions About Spirituality: Its Meaning, Influence, and Future
Brian Steensland

Index