The Invention of Clutter and the New Spiritual Discipline of Decluttering

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-242
Author(s):  
Christy Lang Hearlson
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Spiritual Discipline ◽  
Christian Conversion ◽  
Consumer Capitalism ◽  
Ecological Self ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Things ◽  
Sacramental Vision ◽  
Domestic Lives ◽  
Theological Critique

Abstract This essay argues that the popular global decluttering movement epitomized in Marie Kondo is a new spiritual discipline tailored to a particular cultural moment in which members of affluent societies, especially women, are caught between the shame of displaying too much “stuff” at home and the guilt of discarding it. After suggesting reasons for the movement’s neglect by theologians, the essay offers a brief history of the “invention of clutter.” Through this history, the essay frames decluttering as an expression of “makeover culture” that posits a timeless aesthetic self. Decluttering functions as a spiritual practice of late consumer capitalism that converts its followers to a disposition of detachment through procedures that mirror Christian conversion. While appreciating the attention the movement shows to women’s domestic lives and to material things, the essay offers a theological critique of the movement’s construction of an aesthetic self who is absolved of guilt by escaping time and the ecological web into private, timeless space. The essay commends instead a narrative, ecological self whose engagement with material things reflects a sacramental vision that issues in virtues like frugality.

Denied Violence, Glorified Fighting: Spiritual Discipline and Controversy in Ananda Marga

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaëël Voix
Keyword(s):  
West Bengal ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Spiritual Discipline ◽  
Internal Characteristic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork

This article tackles the issue of violence inside Ananda Marga, a contemporary Indian religious movement based in West Bengal. It analyzes a controversy Ananda Marga has been through and questions its role within the movement by examining its link with an internal characteristic of the group: an initiatory process into asceticism. Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in India, I describe the structure of Ananda Marga and then distinguish between the "history" of the movement, which is written and given collectively, and the "stories" of the movement, which are told orally and individually. By confronting these different versions of the same event, I argue that the controversy can be seen as a part of a larger initiatory process in which committed disciples gradually acknowledge the legitimacy of violence.

scholarly journals XXI.—On an Inventory of the Household Goods of Sir Thomas Ramsey, Lord Mayor of London 1577

Archaeologia ◽  
1867 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. W. Fairholt
Keyword(s):  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Domestic Lives

The value of Wills and Inventories as exponents of the domestic lives of our ancestors cannot be too highly estimated. To them we must look as to the most fertile sources from whence a knowledge is to be obtained of that curious unwritten history, the history of the people. The glimpses they afford of domestic manners are all the more precious, because of their rarity elsewhere.

Education Piety

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-59
Author(s):  
Benaouda Bensaid ◽  
Salah Machouche
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Spiritual Growth ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Spiritual Discipline ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Muslim Education ◽  
Spirituality In Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Scholars

This chapter seeks to explore the crossroads between learning in Islam and spirituality, and also the methods according to which Muslim instructors shape students' experiences in a context of piety development. This study also examines questions pertaining to the concept of spirituality in education, methods pedagogic principles that further merge spiritual discipline with knowledge acquisition. The theoretical research draws on the textual analysis of early works of Muslim scholars, more specifically on Abdul Ibn Khaldun and Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, given their prominent positions in the history of Muslim education. This study shows that the Islamic learning has always taken students' spiritual growth for granted and has, despite differences of practices across Muslim regions, always maintained the refining of learners' spiritual character.

Depth, Ecology, and the Deep Ecology Movement

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 293-303
Author(s):  
Luca Valera ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Research Methodology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Deep Ecology ◽  
Total Field ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Psychological Dimension ◽  
Ecological Self ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Arne Næss

The aim of this paper is to focus on the idea of depth developed by Arne Næss, which is related both to his research methodology and some of its anthropological/cosmological implications. Far from being purely a psychological dimension (as argued by Warwick Fox), in Næss’s perspective, the subject of depth is a methodological and ontological issue that underpins and lays the framework for the deep ecology movement. We cannot interpret the question of “depth” without considering the “relational ontology” that he himself has developed in which the “ecological self” is viewed as a “relational union within the total field.” Based on this point of view, I propose that we are able to reinterpret the history of the deep ecology movement and its future, while rereading its politics, from the issue of depth.

scholarly journals Rehearsing Justice: Theatre, Sexuality and the Sacred

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Rue
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Minorities ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
History Of Pain ◽  
The Creation

The theatre actor’s process in a rehearsal hall is reality and metaphor. It can be a rehearsal for justice, where we can live freely. In this laboratory the actor becomes all of us. Like the actor, we inhabit our bodies and our sexualities, sometimes as spiritual practice, or as sacred and creative, even as incarnations. In particular, women’s bodies remember what it is like to be no-body and what it is like to be a some-body. The texts of women’s bodies contain their history of pain, wellness and illness. In creating a character, the actor creates a biography, an inner life, and the actor’s imagination aligns with the character’s situation. This is the creation of a character’s ‘living story’. Similarly, for all of us, this is akin to self knowledge. When women and sexual minorities tell their stories and listen to each others’ self knowledge, they are reading their bodies as texts. And worlds split open.

scholarly journals Politics and Ethic of Care of the Self in Albert Camus’s The Plague

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 240-255
Author(s):  
Mukesh Kumar Bairva
Keyword(s):  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Spiritual Discipline ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ethical Project ◽  
Speaking Truth To Power ◽  
Ethics And Politics

Albert Camus’ The Plague articulates a new aesthetic of existence that resists biopolitical normalization. It means cultivating one’s self and not attempting to discover an authentic and hidden self because it entails a continual process of becoming.  The sudden eruption of plague in Oran, signifies a rupture in history of its people as the “bored populace is consumed by commercial habits aimed at making money”. In The Plague, if some people become more self-centred and insensitive, characters such as Rieux, Rambert, Peneloux and Joseph Grand show concern for the suffering people and stand in solidarity with them. Their characterization as ordinary individuals who assume responsibility for others’ existence in times of disaster reflects Camus’ hermeneutic of care of the self as an ethical project.  Camus aptly asserts that “ordinary acts of courage and kindness are more helpful than the illusion of superheroes”. Deriving a cue from Foucault, Heidegger and Levinas, the paper attempts to explore how care of the self is intertwined with ethics and politics. It is argued that without spiritual discipline and caring for others, the ethical transformation of self cannot take place. It indicates fashioning of the self more freely and self-reflexively and thus speaking truth to power and sacrificing for others. The paper examines this poetics of self which shares an ethical relationship with truth, freedom and kindness.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Porterfield ◽  
John Corrigan ◽  
Darren E. Grem
Keyword(s):  
Religious Organizations ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Early American Republic ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Consumer Capitalism ◽  
Early American ◽  
History Of ◽  
Marketing Tool ◽  
Commercial Organizations

Beginning with the intertwining of commerce and Christianity in the colonial era, the Introduction offers a historical framework for understanding the evolving relationship between American religious organizations and consumer capitalism. From the move toward parity between religious and commercial organizations under the aegis of contract law in the early American republic to the infusion of business practices into religious organizations beginning in the nineteenth century, and finally to recent equations of religion and prosperity and the strategic use of religion as a marketing tool for business growth, this chapter identifies business practices and economic theories embedded within the history of American religious organizations. The chapter calls for more attention to the business side of religion as not only a neglected aspect of American religious history but also a new way of understanding that history.

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