Purchase this article
USD $30.00
W(h)ither New Age Studies?
The Uses of Ethnography in a Contested Field of Scholarship
in Religion and Society
Author:
Matthew Wood
Matthew Wood
Queen’s University Belfast m.wood@qub.ac.uk
Search for other papers by Matthew Wood in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Matthew Wood in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
USD $0.01
All currencies in US Dollar
Since the 1980s, there has existed a field of scholarly inquiry into a range of phenomena termed New Age. The relative lack of ethnographic studies in this field was identified several years ago, in response to research that focused merely on the discourses within alleged key writings. However, the employment of ethnographic methods does not by itself resolve the problems inherent in other modes of research; attention also has to be paid to how ethnography is used in practice. This article examines ethnographies of the New Age in terms of the extent to which they contextualize data within their immediate social frames, by paying attention to actors' practices and interactions, and to the ways in which beliefs and discourses are constructed and contested. The article demonstrates the strong tendency among New Age ethnographic studies to veer from 'the social' and to rest instead on analytically problematic conceptualizations of agency. It argues that epistemological revision is required to form the basis of a more sociologically adequate understanding of the phenomena addressed.