Children of the New Age: A History of Spiritual Practices - Rilegato

Sutcliffe, Steven

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0415242983 ISBN 13: 9780415242981

Casa editrice: Routledge, 2002

Riassunto

The first true social history of the phenomenon known as New Age culture, Children of the New Age presents an overview of the diverse varieties of New Age belief and practice from the 1930s to the present day. Drawing on original ethnographic research and rarely seen archival material, it calls into question the assumption that the New Age is a discrete and unified 'movement', and reveals the unities and fractures evident in contemporary New Age practice.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Steven Sutcliffe is affiliated to the University of Stirling. He is the author of numerous journal articles on the New Age and is the co-editor, with Marion Bowman, of Beyond the New Age.

Product Description:

Elements of New Age culture have emerged from the underground to become a central part of everyday life for many in the west. The demand for organic foods and natural remedies; the growing general interest in Wicca and the supernatural; the peace and anti-road lobbies and the burgeoning global rave scene are all influenced byt he variegated counterculture that New Age represents. But what exactly is New Age? How should we define its impact within the wider intellectual history of western culture? Children of the New Age , the first complete, up-to-date history of the New Age phenomenon, combines original ethnographic research and rare archival material to give a definitive overview of New Age belief and practice from the 1930s to the present day. It chronicles the development of alternative spirituality from embryonic beginnings to a universal trend: from its inception within the underground enclaves of Rosicrucians, occultists and Alice Bailey's neo-theosophists to its modern-day incusrions into mainstream political, musical and artistic culture. But this is also a distinctly critical history. New Age culture, says Steven S. Sutcliffe, is notoriously variegated and severely contested, party to competing strands of revelation and apocalypse. Caught between the hippy explosion and the terrifying doomsday scenarios of milennial Christianity and survivalist groups, it has been the preserve both of extreme, other-wordly religious individualists and of humanistic countercultures stressing the Edenic perfection of this-wordly existence. At stake in its history are controversial questions of value, and of its perceived status as a discrete and unified movement. What 'counts' as New Age? To whom does New Age culture belong? Is it now genuinely mainstream, or does its egalitarian, grass-roots, small-group ethos resist easy appropriation and succinct politicisation? Making special reference to first-hand accounts of the author's adventures in counterculture, includi

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Routledge
• Data di pubblicazione: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0415242983
• ISBN 13: 9780415242981
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 288