Spiritualities and neoliberalism: Changes and continuities

Since the 1960s, sociologists of religion have been increasingly focused on the study of belief practised outside institutional religious settings. This mainly centres on what Lynch (2007) terms ‘the new spirituality’ – progressive practices and values informed by conceptual, material and social resources associated with established belief systems but detached from their institutional roots. The cultural expansion of such movements, in Europe and North America in particular, throughout the 1970s appeared to presage a dramatic transformation in religious practice. However, by the 1990s, it became clear that there was little evidence of large-scale change, either in the cultural importance of established religions or the number of religious practitioners engaging with established theological traditions. Consequently, engagement with the new spirituality has remained a minority interest compared to established religions. Attention has therefore turned to new spirituality as a socio-cultural presence, through spiritualized practices becoming embedded beyond the contexts of their original development, often in secularized forms (e.g. yoga). These subjectivity-related discourses have become integral to production and consumption processes in contemporary capitalism (Heelas, 2008).