Hinduism and New Age

2019 ◽  
pp. 141-161
Author(s):  
Kathinka Frøystad
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
New Age ◽  
Conscious Effort ◽  
Self Development ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Religious Philanthropy

One of the latest transformations of Hinduism concerns the appropriation of Western New Age influences, which in the 1990s and 2000s gave rise to a burgeoning spiritual field dominated by urban middle-class Hindus. This chapter discusses its growth and fuzzy contours and analyses its rapid growth. Drawing on psychology-inspired social theory, the chapter argues that the rapid societal changes brought about by the liberalization of India’s economy created a demand for self-development techniques that facilitated adjustment to these changes, some of which were spiritualized in the guru movements that began to mushroom. Cultivating a New Age emphasis on human oneness in a country as hierarchical and multi-religious as India makes Indian New Age stand out in at least two respects. First, by the friction between oneness, class-stratified organization, and religious philanthropy, here conceptualized as ‘patrimonial oneness’. And, secondly, by its self-conscious effort to bridge religious boundaries, though religious cosmopolitanism was difficult to accomplish in practice.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Laura Harris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual Artist

In Experiments in Exile, I explore and compare projects undertaken by two twentieth-century American intellectuals while they lived in voluntary exiles in the United States: the Trinidadian writer and revolutionary C. L. R. James and the Brazilian visual artist and counterculturalist Hélio Oiticica. James and Oiticica never met. They lived and worked in the United States at different moments. My focus is on James’s stay during the 1940s and on Oiticica’s stay during the 1970s. Given the significant differences between them—not just at the level of nationality but at the level of race (James was black, Oiticica was white), class (James was situated within a precarious middle class, Oiticica was firmly established within an upper middle class), sexuality (James was straight, Oiticica was gay), and disciplinary locations (James is generally situated in the history of radical social theory and practice, and Oiticica is generally situated in the history of avant-garde aesthetic theory and practice)—this is surely an unlikely combination. This study is itself an experiment, one that goes beyond the usual parameters of comparativist or transnational research, to identify, in the surprising resonances between the projects pursued by these two very disparate figures, a common project I believe they, together, bring into relief....

The Country Book

2021 ◽  
pp. 129-161
Author(s):  
John Evelev
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Herman Melville ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
National Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
Suburban Development ◽  
A Site ◽  
Suburban Life

Picturesque aesthetics and an increased focus on men’s domestic life shaped the rapid growth of the suburbs in the mid-nineteenth century, one of the most consequential reconfigurations of American understandings of national space. This suburban development had its own popular literary genre in the period, the country book. Although the country book is now largely forgotten and many of its more prominent examples have lapsed into obscurity, canonical writers such as Herman Melville wrote in the genre, and Thoreau’s Walden can also be understood in the context of this genre. The country book’s vision of the suburbs as a site of picturesque male domesticity that allowed for both privacy and homosocial intimacy countered a dominant vision of urban masculinity as public, individualistic, and competitive. Although the country book in general offers an idealized vision of male suburban life, individual texts also often feature deferrals, debility, and even death that threaten both male privacy and intimacy. The country book promoted the imaginative investments in suburban development at the same time that it hinted at the contradictions at the heart of middle-class masculine identity that foreclosed on that dream. In this way, as with the park movement texts discussed in Chapter 3, the country books that supported mid-nineteenth-century suburban development expressed both the social aspirations and fears of bourgeois men.

Children's Socioemotional Development Across Cultures

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Heidi Keller
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Research Evidence ◽  
Socioemotional Development ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Developmental Pathways ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Self Development ◽  
Farming Families ◽  
Developmental Domains

The development of socioemotional competencies is central for children's development in general. Infants are equipped with basic predispositions to acquire environmental information. However, contexts and cultures differ with respect to their emphasis on particular developmental domains. Two developmental pathways for which research evidence is available have been characterized: the Western middle-class perspective and the perspective of rural traditionally living farming families. Infants have different social experiences with respect to their caregivers, their behaviors, and their social regulation. The developmental focus of Western middle-class children is on individualistic agency, which implies that socioemotional development is subordinated to self-development. The developmental focus of the rural traditionally living farmer child is on social connectedness and social responsibility. Self-development is part of the development of communal agency. This review discusses the ethical implications of regarding the Western middle-class pathway as universal and normative and emphasizes the need to consider different pathways as normative.

Jewish New Age and the Middle Class: Jewish Identity Politics in Israel under Neoliberalism

Sociology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Kaplan ◽  
Rachel Werczberger
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
New Age ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Class Reproduction

This article asks why middle-class Israeli seculars have recently begun to engage with Jewish religiosity. We use the case of the Jewish New Age (JNA) as an example of the middle class’s turn from a nationalised to a spiritualised version of Judaism. We show, by bringing together the sociology of religion’s interest in emerging spiritualities and cultural sociology’s interest in social class, how after Judaism was deemed socially significant in identity-based struggles for recognition, Israeli New Agers started culturalising and individualising Jewish religiosity by constructing it in a spiritual, eclectic, emotional and experiential manner. We thus propose that what may be seen as cultural and religious pluralism is, in fact, part of a broader system of class reproduction.

scholarly journals Theorizing societalization across borders: Globality, transnationality, postcoloniality

2020 ◽  
pp. 001139212095211
Author(s):  
Anna Amelina ◽  
Manuela Boatcă ◽  
Gregor Bongaerts ◽  
Anja Weiß
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Border Studies ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Micro Level

The editorial summarizes the main conceptual and epistemological challenges of theorizing on society across borders. Its particular aim is to initiate the dialogue between theories of society and cross-border studies that address global, transnational and postcolonial relations. In essence, this special issue addresses four interrelated concerns of studying societal processes across borders. The first of these concerns is prompted by a decades-old critique of methodological nationalism. The second concern addresses the question of how can ‘society’ and the boundaries of ‘societalization’ be conceptualized, if global, transnational and postcolonial processes straddle the boundaries of nation-states? The third concern relates to the fact that sociological ‘grand’ theories have been criticized for failing to analyze recent developments of societies on a meso- and micro-level. Fourthly, a conversation between social theory and cross-border studies is also challenged by epistemic inequalities. Therefore, theories of society should be able to take into account not only the ‘grand scale’ of societal contexts and societal changes but also the positionality of the theorizing subject within global asymmetries of power.

Healing the Self to Heal the World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica M. Emerich
Keyword(s):  
Personal Development ◽  
New Age ◽  
Positive Thinking ◽  
Self Healing ◽  
New Thought ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The World ◽  
Spiritual Self ◽  
The Mind

This chapter examines how LOHAS salvages its “New Age” focus on self-development or actualization. It examines the Mind Cure, New Thought, and New Age movements in terms of their relationship to capitalism to show how LOHAS extends and expands these movements through the LOHAS category of Personal Development (also referred to as the Mind/Body/Spirit market). In Personal Development goods and services, physical and spiritual self-healing reflects a moral pragmatism by linking self-healing work with that of healing the world. Threaded through the LOHAS discourse is a popular American theme—the power of positive thinking—and this healing modality is put to use in so-called the quantum spiritualities, the latest incarnation of the American therapeutic tradition. The end of the chapter shows how the LOHAS texts use examples of healed selves as testimonials to show that it is indeed possible for individuals to transform themselves to social warriors.

scholarly journals Strategi Pemasaran Dalam Rangka Meningkatkan Penjualan Keramik Private Label Dan Memenangkan Kompetisi Pada Pt.Catur Mitra Sejati Sentosa,Tbk (Mitra10)

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Dan Chairy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Customer Service ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Marketing Mix ◽  
Private Label ◽  
Profit Margins ◽  
High Profit ◽  
Market Leader ◽  
Catch Up

Recently, the development of building materials supermarket business is growing fast and rapidly, this can be seen from the rapid growth of the Indonesia’s economy. One of the building materials supermarket in Indonesia is Mitra10. Mitra10 has 27 stores spread across Indonesia but unfortunately Mitra10's sales still can’t catch up its competitor, Depo Bangunan. Depo Bangunan only has 8 stores in Indonesia so Mitra10 must analyze the internal, external and industrial environments related to building materials supermarket business then analyze it using CP Matrix. Depo Bangunan is considered as a market leader in building and materials field so Mitra10 must conduct an offensive strategy by using a frontal attack on price, people, rapid delivery and customer service by using a private label so that Mitra10's private label will be increasingly known and at the same time subsidize high profit margins and logistic costs. The use of this strategy is applied to segment A which is considered as a warzone in a place that intersect with Depo Bangunan, with an undifferentiated strategy and applying positioning on private label products that are divided based on high end class, middle class and low class. The implementation of STP is assisted by a marketing mix where the price given in the warzone area is a local brand price that is equated with the price at Depo Bangunan and the private label price is given lower than the local brand in the Depo Bangunan or Mitra10 then the product will follow motives in Depo Bangunan that sell quickly so that the assortment and variety of products will increase, the expansion of Mitra10 will be faster and at last, the convenience of consumers when shopping also have to be considered so that consumers will be more loyal to Mitra10.

Wars Against Waste

Waste ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 93-132
Author(s):  
Eiko Maruko Siniawer
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Pivot Point ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
Oil Shock ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Save Energy ◽  
A Site

The early 1970s were a sharp pivot point in Japan’s postwar history, as the Garbage War of 1971 and the Oil Shock of 1973 thrust waste and wastefulness into a place of unprecedented visibility. Concerns about the waste of garbage and resources became acute, fueling environmental protection efforts and calls to “save resources” and “save energy.” The waste of things, resources, and energy came to be seen as tightly interrelated, and provoked reflection about the costs and consequences of mass production and mass consumption. With lamentations about the “throwaway society” and its “culture of disposability,” waste also became a site of reflection about the values and priorities born of high economic growth. In the 1970s, waste consciousness was not about subsistence or about friction to societal changes, but was rather a way to defend the middle-class lifestyles already achieved.

Employment insecurity and social theory: the power of nightmares

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Fevre
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
International Comparison ◽  
New Age ◽  
Employment Insecurity

Data from the countries which social theorists had in mind when they elaborated the idea of a new age of employment insecurity do not support their theories. If the age of insecurity is dawning anywhere, it is in Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Turkey, Finland and Poland. It is not plausible that these examples inspired Beck, Giddens and Sennett. The causes of the different trends revealed by international comparison are more likely to be found in complex, multi-factoral explanations than in an age of insecure employment. The theorists became wedded to their diagnosis because of the problems they encountered in doing theory after the demise of Marxism and the post-modern turn made their critiques insecure. Their need for legitimation made their theorizing vulnerable to co-option in dystopian nightmares that served powerful interests.

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