"As Above, So Below": Contemporary British Cosmologies of Spirituality and the New Age

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Introduction:Popular phenomena associated with the broad category of the "New Age" are understudied and simplified in the anthropology of religion. While traditional religious identification has declined, a recent UK poll indicated that 20% believe in a 'greater spiritual power', but not God (YouGov 2015). The few previous anthropological studies present a simplistic, homogenous picture. This research will think "with" the New Age, through innovative cosmological and "ontological" approaches. It will show how the New Age is heterogenous, yet practices flow between different individuals, locations and events, creating a lived network on the ground. Beyond this, the New Age itself will be reflexively positioned as a theory of British society.Research Context:A "cosmology" refers to the ways in which entities interact (Venkatesan 2014, 77). Following the example of studies in the loosely-defined "ontological turn" movement, my research will generate concepts from the ethnographic data itself, allowing New Age cosmologies to recursively analyse themselves (Holbraad & Pedersen 2017, 16). Claims about what exists are experimentally equated with theories about what exists (Pedersen 2012), turning New Age phenomena into fully-fledged concepts, not just material objects, that are able to explain themselves and other phenomena around them. Tracing these objects and practices through several key hubs in my ethnographic field site will show the New Age as both a lived movement on the ground, with real connections between practices, while at the same time representing its internal diversity.The "methodological monism" (Pedersen 2012) of this ontological approach collapses separate spheres of social life. Examining the ways in which personal and impersonal forces are understood and practiced, will enable me to address the relation between New Age practices and wider social forces.Following Pedersen's approach to Mongolian shamanism as an 'indigenous theory of societal transition' (2011, 223), this research will show how New Age practices emerge as theories of contemporary British society.Methodology:Ethnographic participant observation, with attendant unstructured interviews will be performed in Hebden Bridge; this research will start from the multiple spiritual stores, busy yoga centre, several vegan cafes, and holistic therapy centre. The project will explore the continuous and discontinuous flows between these buildings, individuals who visit them, and the events that organise around them. 'Nodal ethnography', which takes 'the singular, particular and ephemeral' as the unit of analysis (Kyriakides 2015, 24), provides a way of exploring events. Anthropologists have an increasing awareness that "online" and "offline" identities and practices are not separate (Pink et al. 2016, 44-45), so a digital ethnography (Pink et al. 2016) element will be included.Impacts:Even in academic literature, the New Age is often portrayed as commodified and frivolous (Davidsen 2012, 189). By drawing out the important role in which these spiritualities play in many people's daily lives, a critical part of contemporary British spirituality can be understood and respected. Further than this, by showing how New Age cosmologies and the people involved in such practices understand wider British society, my research will impact wide questions such as the distrust of media and politicians, how people cope with economic and personal crises, and how conflict is resolved between competing religious and spiritual traditions.