Practical Spiritualities in a Media Age

by Coats, Curtis; Emerich, Monica M.

• ISBN13: 9781474223164
• ISBN10: 1474223168
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-11-19
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

We live in a media age where technologies become the sites and sources of our practices and beliefs, including those deeper values that guide decisions about how we should live.

Practical Spiritualities in a Media Age explores how and why media become the site and source of spiritual expressions that address the mundane or everydayness of our lives. Including international case studies and essays from leading scholars such as Stewart Hoover and Graham Harvey, the book examines the ways and the places in which people have employed media and information technologies to weave spiritual meaning throughout the demands and pastimes of their lives. Topics range from food and sex to spiritual tourism.

In doing so, the volume takes up a call from Paul Heelas' seminal work, Spiritualities of Life, to provide more examples, more richness and more depth to the variety of spiritual practices that exist in late modernity. Providing critical, scholarly explorations of the complexities and contradictions of late-modern spiritual practices, Practical Spiritualities in a Media Age is a must-read for anyone working in the intersection of media, religion or spirituality, and culture.

Author Biography

Curtis Coats is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, and Co-director of Film Studies at Millsaps College, USA.

Monica M. Emerich is Instructional Designer at Colorado State University, USA. Her previous publications include Media, Spiritualities and Social Change (2011) with Stewart Hoover.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Pragmatic, Spiritual and Mediated, Curtis Coats (Millsaps College, USA) and Monica Emerich (University of Colorado, USA)
2. At the Root: Food and Sex as Mediated Spiritual Expression, Graham Harvey (The Open University, UK)
3. Baby-Wearing in the Digital Age as Aesthetic Orthopraxy: Materialist Consumption, Embodied Practice and Mediated Experience, Florence Pasche Guignard, PhD (University of Toronto, Canada)
4. Creating Sacred Space at Work, Judi Neal (Edgewalkers International, USA)
5. The Glastonbury Candle: Commodity as Medium for Practical Spirituality, Marion Bowman (The Open University, UK)
6. The Spirit of Place: Identity and Media in Relation to Cornwall, Garry Tregidga (University of Exeter, UK)
7. Spirit Moves in All Things: Kinship Ethics and Alternative Economies in Performance-Oriented Subcultures, Lucas Johnston (Wake Forest College, USA)
8. Hooping Spiritualities: Embodied Experience and Communities of Practice In Hula Hooping, Jenna Gray-Hildenbrand (Middle Tennessee State, USA) and Martha Roberts (University of California, USA)
9. Online Consumer Generated Reviews of Spiritual Practices in Tourism, Alex Norman (University of Sydney, Australia)
10. The Post Secret, Rachel Liberman (University of Denver, USA), and Stewart Hoover (University of Colorado, USA)
11. “Save a Tree, Plant Yourself”: Green Burial Marketing, Recycled Bodies, and the Practice of Eco-Piety in Life and Death, Sarah McFarland Taylor (Northwestern University, USA)
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index