What Matters?

Ethnographies of Value in a Not So Secular Age

Courtney Bender, Ann Taves, Courtney Bender, Ann Taves

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231504683
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Over the past decade, religious, secular, and spiritual distinctions have broken down, forcing scholars to rethink secularity and its relationship to society. Since classifying a person, activity, or experience as religious or otherwise is an important act of valuation, one that defines the characteristics of a group and its relation to others, scholars are struggling to recast these concepts in our increasingly ambiguous, pluralistic world.

This collection considers religious and secular categories and what they mean to those who seek valuable, ethical lives. As they investigate how individuals and groups determine significance, set goals, and attribute meaning, contributors illustrate the ways in which religious, secular, and spiritual designations serve as markers of value. Reflecting on recent ethnographic and historical research, chapters explore contemporary psychical research and liberal American homeschooling; the work of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century American psychologists and French archaeologists; the role of contemporary humanitarian and volunteer organizations based in Europe and India; and the prevalence of highly mediated and spiritualized publics, from international psy-trance festivals to Ghanaian national political contexts. Contributors particularly focus on the role of ambivalence, attachment, and disaffection in the formation of religious, secular, and spiritual identities, resetting research on secular society and contemporary religious life while illuminating what matters in the lives of ordinary individuals.

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Introduction: Things of Value
• From a Materialist Ethic to the Spirit of Prehistory
• Conquering Religious Contagions and Crowds: Nineteenth-Century Psychologists and the Unfinished Subjugation of Superstition and Irrationality
• Religious and Secular, “Spiritual” and “Physical” in Ghana
• Volunteer Experience
• Secular Humanitarianism and the Value of Life
• Homeschooling the Enchanted Child: Ambivalent Attachments in the Domestic Southwest
• Mind Matters: Esalen’s Sursem Group and the Ethnography of Consciousness
• Tribalism, Experience, and Remixology in Global Psytrance Culture
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Index