CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Uibu, Marko |
|---|---|
| Title | Seekers of the 'Alternative': Making Sense of the Self and the World Through Spiritual Practices in Estonia |
| Summary | Modern spirituality as an ‘invisible’ and ‘individual’ practice deprived of strong institutionalized or group support means that participants have to find themselves the most meaningful and authoritative teachings in the non-standardized maze of the spiritual marketplace. This thesis explores the process of becoming spiritually involved, its reasons and consequences from an individual and social perspective. The study is based on participant observation and in-depth interviews conducted in Estonia, the country where several comparative surveys show the lowest level of importance of religion in Europe or even the world. The importance of spiritual ideas, however, is high despite the prevalence of a scientific-materialistic worldview in the public discourse and mainstream media. The present study has an important mission to bring a different voice into the polarized debate between the spokespeople of the skeptical and the spiritual positions, emphasizing the importance of understanding the social meaning of spiritual practices. My results show that despite of its ‘hidden’ popularity, spirituality remains marginal to the public eye and participants feel the threat of stigmatization. Unlike the skeptics who take belief in the paranormal as a kind of ‘disease’, this study demonstrates that the preference for the ‘alternative’ is rather a ‘symptom’ or even ‘cure’: the ‘symptom’ of decreasing authority and meaningfulness of the scientific-materialistic world-view and its ‘official’ institutions for many people; the ‘cure’ in the form of the spiritual field with its non-standardized and marginal teachings and very flexible frames which people can use to develop and combine their own meaningful practices. Importantly, participation in the ‘spiritual marketplace’ or adoption of such practices cannot be viewed as instrumental: in this multi-layered process the evidence (books, for example) generates the trust and support necessary for individual experiments to provide a final confirmation and guide people to feel and interpret things differently. |
| Supervisor | Naumescu, Vlad; Kowalski, Alexandra |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/uibu_marko.pdf |
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