From spirituality to spiritualities

Spirituality in the Narrative: A Detour Via Genealogy

Yoga, meditation, personal development movements, New Age esoteric practices, shamanic rituals, East or South Asian-based beliefs: Today, more and more activities are defined as “spiritual.” While most of these activities are inspired by specific cosmologies that have their own representations of the world, derived practices are usually highly customized and often private. They are typically based on personal beliefs borrowed from a wide range of sources, such as the belief in an interconnected world or in a form of life after death, mindfulness activities, meditations, etcetera. A good number of them sustain the well-being industry and offer tools for self-exploration and realization.

The current enthusiasm for spirituality as a popular narrative is generally attributed to contemporary religious reconfigurations generated by secularization processes and a certain disenchantment with religions considered authoritarian or institutions. However, the distinction between religion and spirituality is not obvious, and it would be wrong to limit spirituality to personal development movements or the reappropriation of certain traditions from Asia (Buddhism, Hinduism) or Indigenous Peoples. In particular, the modernity and dissociation between the private and the public, the scientific and critical approach to religious dogma, and a greater tendency towards relativism have contributed to disassociating the spiritual and the religious as two spheres of religiosity (Carrette and King 2004; Huss 2014). And yet most people who attend religious institutions consider themselves “spiritual.”

Implicitly or explicitly, spirituality was historically anchored in religious traditions such as transcendence practices and paths, sometimes ecstatic, whether Christian mysticism, the Islamic belief of Sufism, or Jewish Kabbalah (Obadia 2023). Interestingly, the term is less present in non-monotheist traditions, even though these traditions are not without rituals seeking to contact and interact with other levels of reality.

If we take a detour via genealogy, we discover that the word “spirituality” stems from the Latin word spiritus, which, in turn, is from the Greek pneumatikos, which denotes “spirit” but also “the breath.” It thus defines the goods, charisms or realities of a world where value is distinctive because they are bathed in the breath of the spirit. In fact, the concept of spirituality is intimately connected to religion. The word “religion” stems from the Latin cultus, which defines a cultural system made up of beliefs, moral codes, rituals, and a specific organized group, whereas spirituality stems from the Latin pietas, which refers to a religion experienced as a personal devotion. In Antiquity, however, it was rare for a person to be spiritual (pietas) without belonging to an organized group and their social and ethical system (cultus). It was not until the twenty-second century that Christianity seized the term to associate it with the more subjective dimension of faith, a dimension that then replaced corporeality and the materiality of beliefs.

The harsh criticism of the philosophers of the Enlightenment regarding dogmatic discourse and religion established the rupture and gives the church a new relationship regarding the autonomy of practice and a certain individual reflexivity which, as a result of Kant, distanced established theology (Nérisson 2021). While the term spirituality is not clearly stated, this is where a quest for truth takes root, one founded on experimentation and that developed in opposition to “religious obscurantism.” The German Romanticism of the twentieth century and Schleiermacher’s emphasis on the notion of sentiment rehabilitated personal emotion and experience in the relationship with religion. The thinker, Galen Watts, situates these developments in a cultural continuum that connects the philosophies of Romanticism with transcendentalist and theosophical movements, and the New Thought movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which thus intended to distinguish itself from anything associated with “tradition” (Watts 2022). According to Watts (2020), this experimental epistemology consists of an immanent conception by God or the superempirical which, when coupled with a form of Romantic expressivism, postulates the existence of a “true self” and a teleology of self-realization. The trends originating in the New Age, and, to a lesser extent, the Christian charismatics and the 1960s human potential movement, contributed to transforming this trend into what some call the “spiritual turn,” which characterizes the current religious landscape.

Transposing the universality of the Enlightenment to a space that is now global, the notion of spirituality thus refers to an unenshrined experience of the historical, social and political contingencies that can shape it. It reflects a postmodern fantasy that imbues the universal with a sacred essence, by emphasizing the commonalities of transcendental experiences, a certain fluidity associated with cosmopolitanism and, by the same token, a type of common sharing across all religions. It is in the current paradigm of the reign of self (Taylor 1989; Cushman 1995), that is, an ethos geared towards individualism, well-being, growing consumerism, self-realization, the celebration of nature, and combined with the redefinition of self and the quest for individual mysticism, that the acceptance of spirituality is presently unfolding, offering the individual tools for transcendence (Illouz 2008; Mossière 2022; Bramadat et al. 2022). Accordingly, the term focuses on a shift of religious belief towards the subjective relationship to self, a tense relationship with the established authorities, and a holistic vision of the world and the individual (Houtman and Aupers 2006). This discourse on spirituality accompanied by its own practices is built in opposition to the objectified elements of religion, all while ignoring the role of religious traditions’ social and cultural elements (sacred texts, rituals, practices, myths, rituals, moral codes, communities, social institutions) in the opportunities to mediate between the self and transcendence.

As proposed by Great Britain’s Kieran Flanagan (2007), spirituality today is the product of the conjunction of several moments: a postmodern turn anchored in the 1970s’ counterculture movements and a form of Romanticism going back to the nineteenth century; the quest for an inner life sustained by a new interest in the body, incorporation and awareness can unfold both in the individual sphere and in institutional environments, such as those of health; and the commodification of spiritual resources in the context of a spirituality business (Jain 2015), which tends to transform religious behaviours in the interests of efficiency and immediacy (Carrette and King 2005).

The concept of spirituality thus appears to stem from a Western construct which allows us to trace the historical evolution of the relationship with spirituality. Just as for numerous concepts stemming from Christianocentric thought (Asad 1993), its introduction as a category of thought in social science thus presents a problem when it comes to understanding phenomena originating from non-Western contexts. This special issue rises to the challenge.

Spirituality as an Epistemological Category of Thought

While the study of spirituality has long been theology’s prerogative, it recently released itself of this by summoning philosophy and history with works such as those of Michel de Certeau. The incursion of the concept in social science is more ambivalent and likely stems from the approach of psychologist William James, who, early in the twentieth century, referred to “spiritual life” as all psychological developments that tend to lead to a more intense moral or religious activity in individuals, and accomplish, per se, a state nearing a certain ideal of perfection. In his 1901 work, “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (revised in 1958), James indicates that spirituality implies a quest for transformation from a negative state to a positive state, which is achieved via external techniques. This perspective, based on the practical dimension of spirituality, is somewhat taken up by Michel Foucault, who, in his reflection on the development of spirituality, considers it in a practical and teleological dimension, inspired by the spiritual exercises of Ignace de Loyola, as “the search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth” (Foucault 2001, 16). Contrary to Foucault’s critical perspective, James (1958 [1901]) writings on spirituality focus specifically on its experiential and subjective dimensions. He thus defines spirituality as all attitudes, ideas, lifestyles and practices founded on the conviction that, on the one hand, the visible world belongs to a spiritual universe from which it derives meaning, and on the other hand, union and harmony with this universe are an end unto itself. In fact, James considers spirituality as a specific level of religious experience based on the inner life and qualifies it as first-hand religion, whereas second-hand religion refers to rituals, beliefs, and institutions. While relatively old, this approach still influences common perceptions of spirituality today.

The distinction James makes between religion and spirituality echoes thoughts by his late-nineteenth-century contemporary, Georg Simmel. Noticing the influence modernity and urbanization were having on social connections and religious life, the German sociologist shifted the focus of sociological studies that had, to this point, been on clerical life, to the individual’s relationship with the world in terms of the way of being and becoming in the world, rather than seeing the world as a finite and objective reality. This interpretation is based on a definition of the so-called vitalistic human being, who places religiosity in an existential dynamic (Vidal 2017), and reminds the subject of their vulnerability and their quest for meaning, thus freed from the constraints of transcendence. This spiritual tension, which is nourished by spontaneity and the subjective relationship the individual has with things, others, and the world, offers the subject the creativity needed to accept the fragmentation and dissolution of modern life’s social norms and roles (Varga 2007). In fact, Georg Simmel (1997 [1911]) foresaw that in modern times, the sensitive and malleable character of spirituality would make for a more long-lasting and disseminated form of religion than strict and dogmatic religions. In this sense, he identifies the aspiration and expansion and the quest for transcendence characteristic of traditional mysticism on the one hand and, on the other hand, the objective and predetermined forms that align with this impetus. These assertions, put forward more than a century ago, remain surprisingly relevant, so consistent are they with observations made in European and North American societies.

The idea that spirituality is rooted in the immanence where it appears is currently supported by the observations of many sociologists and anthropologists, such as Nancy Ammerman (2013), who, first and foremost, considers spirituality in its practical dimension. Like Ammerman, sociologist Meredith McGuire (2010) sees spirituality from the perspective of lived religion, based on four elements: an eclectic religious environment; a focus on pragmatic considerations; an accent placed on materialities; blurred boundaries between the sacred and the profane. However, McGuire positions spirituality in a deeper historicity by associating it with older forms of popular religious expression. Sociology thus quickly intertwines spiritualities with lifestyles and ethical guidelines, following the example of the study by Paul Helaas et al. (2005), which identifies “life-as” (religion in terms of status) and “subjective-life” (spiritual life). While it is agreed that spiritualities can be exceptional in nature (all while manifesting the ordinary), the consensus is, however, less clear with respect to considering the role of transcendence and the supernatural in spirituality. If some, like Ammerman, affirm that the connection to the supernatural is not intrinsic to spirituality, others, like Robert Whutnow (2003), see spirituality as a state of being connected to a divine, supernatural or transcendent order of reality, or alternately, as a perception or awareness of a supra-reality.

In fact, if sociology has addressed the issue of spirituality by exploring empirical manifestations and its links to modern societies, most of the authors agree on the impossibility of defining a phenomenon that seems both obscure and elusive, as the aspects it encompasses are so multi-faceted and kaleidoscopic. There are hence many reservations regarding the relevance of establishing studies on spirituality as a specific field of studies, one distinct from religion. Matthew Wood (2010), one of the people to spearhead this criticism, regrets, for example, the overlap of meta-narratives introduced to define modernity, such as “detraditionalization” or the subjectification of individuals’ religious narratives and practices. He advocates for returning the level of analysis to a contextualization of the behaviour of players in their local universe. In short, the aim is to rethink the scientific discourse on spirituality by returning it to a phenomenon that can be studied ethnographically in the field. Hence the call for social and cultural anthropology to examine spirituality as an object of study, whereby the anthropological method is doubtless the most suited for understanding practices and interactions connected to religion. It would make it possible to capture the plurality of religious socio-historic practices and conceptions and of what spirituality would be in different contexts. This is the project that inspires this theme issue.

Surprisingly, anthropology has paid little attention to spirituality, at least not under this term, even if a few empirical studies have made it possible to identify certain characteristics: ritualistic creativity; healing-based discourses and practices; more or less highly organized transnational networks; the development of a specific symbolic language (Meintel and Mossière 2011). The lack of enthusiasm for the issue is no doubt explained by the fact that the term “spirituality” does not always correspond to the emic language through which the religious players express it. And the fact that certain people allude to it does not necessarily justify the creation of “spirituality” as an analytical category per se. On this note, anthropologists Fedele and Knibbe (2020) advocate for the establishment of an anthropology of spirituality that considers disassociating religion from spirituality as a distinct subject to study, rather than as an analytical construction, and that takes the role of certain variables into consideration, such as gender. Such a project aligns with the genealogy of the concept that showed that spirituality and religion were historically established together and that the presence of spirituality is old; take, for example, esoteric or mystical practices. And yet, existing works on spirituality essentially consider the socio-historic dynamics in the context of Northern societies, where religious beliefs are driven by specific forces (secularization, cultural diversity, individualization, mobility, etcetera). Is spirituality thus merely one of the current manifestations of religious belief? Would it have been established as a heuristic concept due to the Western history with which it is closely intertwined?

Spirituality as a Political Tool

If the genealogy of the concept of spirituality showed what philosopher Jacques Le Brun (2015) qualified as “epistemological weakness,” its extensive presence in the public discourse public shows to what extent the concept of spirituality suffers from a lack of designation, a sort of semantic indetermination that is susceptible to political reappropriation (Bramadat 2019). In Quebec, for example, the modernization and liberalization of a province long dominated by the Catholic church began in the late 1960s, when the religion considered oppressive, authoritarian and sometimes abusive was rejected. This narrative of the emancipation of the individual and the community from the institution substitutes the term “spirituality” with that of “religion” by diffusing new identity statements, for example: “I am spiritual but not religious,” or by replacing the faith-based chaplaincy in health institutions with spiritual healthcare services (Mossière 2020; 2023). In India, anthropologist Peter Van der Veer (2009) shows how the Hindu guru, Vivekananda, resorted to the semantics of spirituality and yoga as much as to Hindu discourse traditions, which he disseminated on the international scene to assert and serve the Indian nationalist project against the British colonial powers. Spirituality can thus revolve around political agendas, as suggested by the new phenomenon of green spiritualities (Becci 2021), or even the notion of conspirituality (Halafof et al. 2022), covered in this issue.

These political uses of spirituality suggest that they would no doubt be less widespread than one might think. The emergence and consolidation of community movements based on orthodoxy, norms and morality are proof of this, exhibiting great vitality, following the example of conservative evangelist movements or certain fundamentalist Islamic trends. Incidentally, statistics show that in reality, spiritual practices and beliefs involve a minority of the population (for example, in Canada, see Wilkins-Laflamme 2021). Extensive qualitative research also suggests that so-called “spiritual” narratives and practices are concentrated in urban, female, well-to-do environments, giving them a distinctive marker (Wood 2010; Altglas 2014; Behnaz 2022). The emergence of a spirituality industry and market shows that it is also shaped by the forces of capitalism and globalization (Jain 2015). The practices of physical discipline and self-control promoted by these new spirituality economies resonate with the semantics of progress and the growth of neoliberal ethics (Rudnyckyj 2009). Thus, mindfulness meditation (Buddhist in origin) is now a key component in the workplace, where it is presented as a secularized self-care practice, contributing to the increased efficiency of individuals and even more so, of workers (Purser 2019). Conversely, spiritual practices can constitute the path to empowerment for disadvantaged populations like women, who are over-represented in these movements, where they seem to find certain empowerment tools (Fedele and Knibbe 2021).

The political and social appropriation of the notion of spirituality thus begs for an exploration of its forms and manifestations in other contexts, taking into consideration the relationships of power that contributed to its dissemination. Countering the depoliticization of the concept advanced by movements such as the New Age, Peter Van der Ver (2009) shows how its dissemination positions itself in exchange relationships, competitions, and political and economic struggles between the West and the East. Beyond the universality of concepts developed during the Enlightenment, the anthropologist suggests considering their universalization as the product of interactions that contribute to its creation. Other anthropologists like Giovanna Parmigiani—in this issue—broach this issue by raising colonialists’ approach to the term, preferring less politically charged wording by talking about relational ontologies, for example.

In this issue, we wanted to position spirituality in the complexity of a time-space matrix by capturing certain spatial variations with the help of ethnographic studies conducted in a wide range of locations. By moving beyond the usual associations between spirituality, on the one hand, and modernity, secularization, and the decline of established religions, on the other hand, we hope to shift the perspective. Our goal is to contribute to the decoolonization of the concept, the genealogy of which indicates ethnocentrism, by examining societies and environments where religion does not constitute a category of thought per se, in order to observe other modalities of contemporary manifestations of spirituality. In fact, although the concept is usually considered in a paradigm of universality that facilitates its global mobility, our wish here is to study the forms, mechanisms and conditions of its insertion in local spaces imbued with their own representations of immanence, transcendence and interactions, but also with their own understanding of being in the world. In other words, it is about understanding how spiritualities, now part of the mainstream vernacular in secular societies, translate in other spaces, all while taking into consideration the dynamics of power, influence and mutual appropriations of traditions inherent to each environment (Carrette and King 2004). A decentred perspective of spirituality emerges from the empirical subjects presented by the authors that reveals the volatility and plasticity, and thus the adaptation to representations of being spiritual in the world and local social issues.

More precisely, we wanted to ask and deal with the following questions. Which religious rituals, practices, beliefs and values are deployed under the influence of spiritualities and the emphasis they place on subjectivity and inner life? What do the authors who identify with spirituality mean by the term and to what extent do these practices and understandings of the world differentiate from vernacular or popular religion? What are the transversal axes of local, contemporary spiritualities? How do these spiritualities fit within the complex local and transnational entanglements that encompass politics, culture and society? What definitions of humankind of other forms of spirituality do they convey and how do they interact with modes of being in the world based on cognitive and scientific understandings of the universe (including psychology, philosophy, etcetera)?

It is therefore not about defining the concept of spirituality, but about tracing the outline and fragments through a series of investigations in the field where the question of spirituality does not arise per se, or arises by summoning others’ semantic fields. The contributions to this theme issue explore local understandings of spirituality in historically and culturally diverse environments (India, Indigenous communities, the Nepali-Bhutanese diaspora, Quebec, Switzerland, Italy, etcetera). The emic perspective they adopt allows them to discuss the concept of spirituality in relation to vernacular concepts that may be connected (religion, contemplation, spirits, asceticism, mysticism, occult), or in contexts where social connections forge spirituality around ideological, material or symbolic issues (secular societies, caste systems, minority status). Several of the texts address spiritualities in Asia and the diaspora, as there has been a romantic fascination with Eastern spiritualities, by way of the hippie wave of the 1970s. Contemporary spiritualities are thus usually seen as interpretations of Asian religions, to which the common imaginary attributes a form of spirituality. The objective of this issue is to deconstruct this type of discourse but also the ethnocentric appropriations that surround the concept of spirituality, while exploring unconventional spirituality field sites.

The issue begins with three texts that explore how spirituality is translated within traditions or among populations that are not custodians of the term: Abdelwahed Mekki-Berrada and his colleagues attempt to uncover the subjective, ethical and aesthetic experiences of Sufi women in Montreal. Based on a reading of concepts that indicate ways of being in the world in the mysticism of Islam, the authors discover a “hermeneutic action” that appears in relationships with the other. Yael Dansac is interested in the cult of megaliths in the region of Carnac, France, from which she unravels somatic measures. In these sensory-focused rituals, the spiritual experience is based on sensorial learning and bodily attention, which are aimed at “self” discovery and transformation. Guillaume Boucher reflects on the moral and virtuous dimension of spirituality among Christianized Nepali-Bhutanese of Hindu origin living in Quebec: He highlights how they forge dynamics of exclusion that fall within the narrative of authenticity and legitimacy strongly rooted at the grassroots level. The following articles deal with the political dimension of spirituality: On the basis of a “cyber-ethnography” conducted in Switzerland, Manéli Farahmand et al. examine how the Swiss holistic environment has accepted theories from the American QAnon movement within the scope of the politicization of spirituality which, historically, is not unprecedented. By incorporating the conceptual framework of religion experienced by conspiritualists she met in Italy, Parmigiani deconstructs polarizing representations usually associated with mainstream conspiritualists. She maintains that they see the world in a logic of inclusion and relationships typical of holistic thinking. On the basis of an “inside” perspective, Jeanine LeBlanc and Paul Gareau reflect on the relationality that traverses the spirituality-religion partnership in their respective communities, Mik’maq and Métis, by highlighting to what extent these relationships, which align with a collective and co-constitutive whole, were abused by the White appropriation to which they are subject. The texts by Lionel Obadia and Catherine De Guise explore the deepening of the role of the encounter and power in the construction of spirituality: De Guise raises the question of the relationship of the guru as an exemplary figure among European and North American ascetics living in India. The qualities of sacredness attributed to gurus by devotees also question the legitimacy of their aspirations to renounce the world, thus leading them to redefine what a “real sādhu” is. Because the spiritual is also often seen as an ideal, the issue ends with a piece by Obadia, who examines the opportunities of materiality and operationalism of ordinary residents in Auroville, a community in the south of India committed to harnessing the full human potential in a renewed era. In this laboratory where the word “spirituality” is, nonetheless, part of the shared narrative, the term’s definition remains elusive, constantly configured by pragmatic logic.

Mysticism, contemplation, sensorial rituals, morality and virtue, asceticism, renunciation, devotion, ideal or Utopia, the manuscripts in this issue show that these dimensions of religious life often associated under the umbrella term of “spirituality” are, nonetheless, bearers of their own epistemologies. Supported by fieldwork, the rich contributions to this theme issue seem to converge on the central role of relationships in the deployment of spiritualities, relationships to self, to others, to the Other, a way to return humankind to a relational ontology of sorts.