Jeremy Carrette – författare

Selling Spirituality offers a critical analysis of the rise of spirituality as a powerful commodity in the global marketplace. It shows how spirituality is big business, examining how spiritual discourses, practices, and institutions have been reshaped by neoliberal forces. This expanded second edition provides significant updates to the book in light of developments from the previous decades, particularly the consolidation of neoliberalism through digital technologies, emerging AI and platform capitalism. Building on the original analysis of the privatisation of religion and the privatisation of welfare, the authors introduce a third privatisation: the outsourcing of attention, affect, and mental resilience to spiritualised techniques of self-regulation amid conditions of precarity, algorithmic governance, and informational overload. Four new chapters examine neoliberalism as a quasi-religious orthodoxy; the commodification of Christian prayer and interiority; mindfulness as a technology of attention within the attention economy; and the dangers of individualised green spirituality in responding to climate crisis. Substantially revised chapters address psychology, Asian philosophies, and spiritual consumer industries. Across these contexts, the book argues that contemporary spirituality increasingly manages distress and anxiety while obscuring the structural sources of social and mental suffering. This insightful book will be of great interest to students and scholars in religious studies, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, political theory, and environmental humanities. It will also be of interest to readers concerned with neoliberalism, mental health, digital capitalism, mindfulness, and the contemporary politics of wellbeing.

Selling Spirituality offers a critical analysis of the rise of spirituality as a powerful commodity in the global marketplace. It shows how spirituality is big business, examining how spiritual discourses, practices, and institutions have been reshaped by neoliberal forces. This expanded second edition provides significant updates to the book in light of developments from the previous decades, particularly the consolidation of neoliberalism through digital technologies, emerging AI and platform capitalism. Building on the original analysis of the privatisation of religion and the privatisation of welfare, the authors introduce a third privatisation: the outsourcing of attention, affect, and mental resilience to spiritualised techniques of self-regulation amid conditions of precarity, algorithmic governance, and informational overload. Four new chapters examine neoliberalism as a quasi-religious orthodoxy; the commodification of Christian prayer and interiority; mindfulness as a technology of attention within the attention economy; and the dangers of individualised green spirituality in responding to climate crisis. Substantially revised chapters address psychology, Asian philosophies, and spiritual consumer industries. Across these contexts, the book argues that contemporary spirituality increasingly manages distress and anxiety while obscuring the structural sources of social and mental suffering. This insightful book will be of great interest to students and scholars in religious studies, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, political theory, and environmental humanities. It will also be of interest to readers concerned with neoliberalism, mental health, digital capitalism, mindfulness, and the contemporary politics of wellbeing.

Foucault and Religion is the first major study of Michel Foucault in relation and response to Religion. Jeremy Carrette offers us a challenging new look at Foucault's work and addresses a religious dimension that has previously been neglected. We see that prior to Foucault's infamous unpublished volume in the 'History of Sexuality', on the theme of Christianity, there is a complex religious sub-text which anticipates this final unseen work.Jeremy Carrette argues that Foucault offers a twofold critique of Christianity by bringing the body and sexuality into religious practice and exploring a political spirituality of the self. He shows us that Foucault's creation of a body theology through the death of God, reveals how religious beliefs reflect the sexual body, questions the notion of a mystical archaeology and exposes the political technology of confession.Anyone interested in understanding Foucault's thought in a new light will find this book a truly fascinating read.

Foucault and Religion is the first major study of Michel Foucault in relation and response to Religion. Jeremy Carrette offers us a challenging new look at Foucault's work and addresses a religious dimension that has previously been neglected. We see that prior to Foucault's infamous unpublished volume in the 'History of Sexuality', on the theme of Christianity, there is a complex religious sub-text which anticipates this final unseen work.Jeremy Carrette argues that Foucault offers a twofold critique of Christianity by bringing the body and sexuality into religious practice and exploring a political spirituality of the self. He shows us that Foucault's creation of a body theology through the death of God, reveals how religious beliefs reflect the sexual body, questions the notion of a mystical archaeology and exposes the political technology of confession.Anyone interested in understanding Foucault's thought in a new light will find this book a truly fascinating read.

In this volume Grace M. Jantzen continues her groundbreaking analysis of death and beauty in western thought by examining the religious roots of death and violence in the Jewish and Christian tradition, which underlie contemporary values.She shows how man’s fear of the female is often implicated in religious violence and in her critique of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament she examines a range of themes that show the western preoccupation with necrophilia. She examines the relation of death to the Jewish covenant, the nature of monotheism, Holy War and the Christian covenant and kingdom. However, Jantzen recognises that submerged beneath these themes in Judaism and Christianity are traces of an alternative world of beauty and life.Jantzen’s internationally recognised feminist philosophy of religion puts forward a powerful analysis of patriarchy and violence and reveals the hidden power of natality. Her work is a searching challenge for our times and one that gives hope in a violent world. This work is the first of two posthumous publications to complete her impressive genealogy death and beauty of western thought.

From Feng Shui to holistic medicine, from aromatherapy candles to yoga weekends, spirituality is big business. It promises to soothe away the angst of modern living and to offer an antidote to shallow materialism.Selling Spirituality is a short, sharp, attack on this fallacy. It shows how spirituality has in fact become a powerful commodity in the global marketplace - a cultural addiction that reflects orthodox politics, curbs self-expression and colonizes Eastern beliefs.Exposing how spirituality has today come to embody the privatization of religion in the modern West, Jeremy Carrette and Richard King reveal the people and brands who profit from this corporate hijack, and explore how spirituality can be reclaimed as a means of resistance to capitalism and its deceptions.

From Feng Shui to holistic medicine, from aromatherapy candles to yoga weekends, spirituality is big business. It promises to soothe away the angst of modern living and to offer an antidote to shallow materialism.Selling Spirituality is a short, sharp, attack on this fallacy. It shows how spirituality has in fact become a powerful commodity in the global marketplace - a cultural addiction that reflects orthodox politics, curbs self-expression and colonizes Eastern beliefs.Exposing how spirituality has today come to embody the privatization of religion in the modern West, Jeremy Carrette and Richard King reveal the people and brands who profit from this corporate hijack, and explore how spirituality can be reclaimed as a means of resistance to capitalism and its deceptions.

William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience was an intellectual landmark, paving the way for current study of psychology, philosophy and religious studies. In this new companion to the Varieties, key international experts provide contemporary responses to James's book, exploring its seminal historical importance and its modern significance. Locating the Varieties within the context of James's other works and exploring James's views on psychology, mysticism, religious experience, emotion and truth, the sixteen articles offer new analyses of the Varieties from the perspectives of postcolonial theory, history, social theory and philosophy. As the only critical work dedicated to the cross-disciplinary influence of The Varieties of Religious Experience, this book testifies to William James's genius and ongoing legacy.

Jeremy Carrette argues that the psychology of religion is no longer sustainable without a social critique, and that as William James predicted, the project of the modernist psychology of religion has failed. Controversially he champions greater social and philosophical analysis within the field to challenge the political naivety and disciplinary illusions of the traditional approaches to psychology of religion. Carrette discusses the relevance of the social and economic factors surrounding the debates of psychology and religion, through three critical examples:psychoanalysishumanistic psychologycognitive neuroscience. A Critical Psychology of Religion provides a new dimension to the debates surrounding religious experience. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of critical psychology, religious experience and the psychology of religion and extends an interdisciplinary challenge to the separation of psychology, sociology, politics, economics and religion.

Jeremy Carrette argues that the psychology of religion is no longer sustainable without a social critique, and that as William James predicted, the project of the modernist psychology of religion has failed. Controversially he champions greater social and philosophical analysis within the field to challenge the political naivety and disciplinary illusions of the traditional approaches to psychology of religion. Carrette discusses the relevance of the social and economic factors surrounding the debates of psychology and religion, through three critical examples:psychoanalysishumanistic psychologycognitive neuroscience. A Critical Psychology of Religion provides a new dimension to the debates surrounding religious experience. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of critical psychology, religious experience and the psychology of religion and extends an interdisciplinary challenge to the separation of psychology, sociology, politics, economics and religion.

In this book Grace Jantzen constructs a Quaker spirituality of beauty as a theological-philosophical response to a world preoccupied with death and violence. Having mapped the foundations of western cultural violence in the Greco-Roman period and the Judea-Christian tradition in Foundations of Violence and Violence to Eternity, she now offers her alternative vision. This vision is an original and creative feminist reading of the Quaker tradition, considering George Fox and the writings of Quaker women, exploring the themes of inner light and beauty as alternatives to violence and the obstacles to building such an alternative world. After showing how seventeenth-century Quakers offered a different option for modernity, she maps the philosophical and ethical implications of engaging with the world through beauty and its transforming power. Written for everyone interested in contemporary spirtuality, it explains how Quaker ideas can provide a way to transform our violent world into one that celebrates life rather than death, peace rather than violence. This work is the second of two posthumous publications to complete Grace M. Jantzen’s Death and the Displacement of Beauty collection, which began with Foundations of Violence (Routledge, 2004).

William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience was an intellectual landmark, paving the way for current study of psychology, philosophy and religious studies. In this new companion to the Varieties, key international experts provide contemporary responses to James's book, exploring its seminal historical importance and its modern significance. Locating the Varieties within the context of James's other works and exploring James's views on psychology, mysticism, religious experience, emotion and truth, the sixteen articles offer new analyses of the Varieties from the perspectives of postcolonial theory, history, social theory and philosophy. As the only critical work dedicated to the cross-disciplinary influence of The Varieties of Religious Experience, this book testifies to William James's genius and ongoing legacy.

This book offers a radical new reading of William James’s work on the idea of ‘religion.’ Moving beyond previous psychological and philosophical interpretations, it uncovers a dynamic, imaginative, and critical use of the category of religion. This work argues that we can only fully understand James’s work on religion by returning to the ground of his metaphysics of relations and by incorporating literary and historical themes. Author Jeremy Carette develops original perspectives on the influence of James’s father and Calvinism, on the place of the body and sex in James, on the significance of George Eliot’s novels, and Herbert Spencer’s ‘unknown,’ revealing a social and political discourse of civil religion and republicanism and a poetic imagination at the heart of James understanding of religion. These diverse themes are brought together through a post-structural sensitivity and a recovery of the importance of the French philosopher Charles Renouvier to James’s work. This study pushes new boundaries in Jamesian scholarship by reading James with pluralism and from the French tradition. It will be a benchmark text in the reshaping of James and the nineteenth-century foundations of the modern study of ‘religion.’

First Published in 1999. Postmodern theorist Michel Foucault is best known for his work on power/ knowledge, and on the regulation of sexuality in modern society. Yet throughout his life, Foucault was continually concerned with Christianity, other spiritual movements and religious traditions, and the death of God, and these themes and materials scattered are throughout his many writings. Religion and Culture collects for the first time this important thinker's work on religion, religious experience, and society. Here are classic essays such as The Battle for Chastity , alongside those that have been less widely read in English or in French. Selections are arranged in three groupings: Madness, Religion and the Avant-Garde; Religions, Politics and the East; and Christianity, Sexuality and the Self: Fragments of an Unpublished Volume. Ranging from Foucault's earliest studies of madness to Confessions of the Flesh , the unpublished fourth volume of his History of Sexuality , his final thoughts on early Christianity, Religion and Culture makes Foucault's work an indispensable part of contemporary religious thought, while also making an important link between religious studies and cultural studies.

Whilst Foucault's work has become a major strand of postmodern theology, the wider relevance of his work for theology still remains largely unexamined. Foucault both engages the Christian tradition and critically challenges its disciplinary regime. Michel Foucault and Theology brings together a selection of essays by leading Foucault scholars on a variety of themes within the history, thought and practice of theology. Revealing the diverse ways that the work of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) has been employed to rethink theology in terms of power, discourse, sexuality and the politics of knowledge, the authors examine power and sexuality in the church in late antiquity, (Castelli, Clark, Schuld), raise questions about the relationship between theology and politics (Bernauer, Leezenberg, Caputo), consider new challenges to the nature of theological knowledge in terms of Foucault's critical project (Flynn, Cutrofello, Beadoin, Pinto) and rethink theology in terms of Foucault's work on the history of sexuality (Carrette, Jordan, Mahon). This book demonstrates, for the first time, the influence and growing importance of Foucault's work for contemporary theology.

In this book Grace Jantzen constructs a Quaker spirituality of beauty as a theological-philosophical response to a world preoccupied with death and violence. Having mapped the foundations of western cultural violence in the Greco-Roman period and the Judea-Christian tradition in Foundations of Violence and Violence to Eternity, she now offers her alternative vision. This vision is an original and creative feminist reading of the Quaker tradition, considering George Fox and the writings of Quaker women, exploring the themes of inner light and beauty as alternatives to violence and the obstacles to building such an alternative world. After showing how seventeenth-century Quakers offered a different option for modernity, she maps the philosophical and ethical implications of engaging with the world through beauty and its transforming power. Written for everyone interested in contemporary spirtuality, it explains how Quaker ideas can provide a way to transform our violent world into one that celebrates life rather than death, peace rather than violence. This work is the second of two posthumous publications to complete Grace M. Jantzen’s Death and the Displacement of Beauty collection, which began with Foundations of Violence (Routledge, 2004).

This book offers a radical new reading of William James’s work on the idea of ‘religion.’ Moving beyond previous psychological and philosophical interpretations, it uncovers a dynamic, imaginative, and critical use of the category of religion. This work argues that we can only fully understand James’s work on religion by returning to the ground of his metaphysics of relations and by incorporating literary and historical themes. Author Jeremy Carette develops original perspectives on the influence of James’s father and Calvinism, on the place of the body and sex in James, on the significance of George Eliot’s novels, and Herbert Spencer’s ‘unknown,’ revealing a social and political discourse of civil religion and republicanism and a poetic imagination at the heart of James understanding of religion. These diverse themes are brought together through a post-structural sensitivity and a recovery of the importance of the French philosopher Charles Renouvier to James’s work. This study pushes new boundaries in Jamesian scholarship by reading James with pluralism and from the French tradition. It will be a benchmark text in the reshaping of James and the nineteenth-century foundations of the modern study of ‘religion.’

How do religious groups, operating as NGOs, engage in the most important global institution for world peace? What processes do they adopt? Is there a “spiritual” UN today? This book is the first interdisciplinary study to present extensive fieldwork results from an examination of the activity of religious groups at the United Nations in New York and Geneva. Based on a three and half-year study of activities in the United Nations system, it seeks to show how “religion” operates in both visible and invisible ways.Jeremy Carrette, Hugh Miall, Verena Beittinger-Lee, Evelyn Bush and Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud, explore the way “religion” becomes a “chameleon” idea, appearing and disappearing, according to the diplomatic aims and ambitions. Part 1 documents the challenges of examining religion inside the UN, Part 2 explores the processes and actions of religious NGOs - from diplomacy to prayer - and the specific platforms of intervention – from committees to networks – and Part 3 provides a series of case studies of religious NGOs, including discussion of Islam, Catholicism and Hindu and Buddhist NGOs. The study concludes by examining the place of diplomats and their views of religious NGOs and reflects on the place of “religion” in the UN today. The study shows the complexity of “religion” inside one of the most fascinating global institutions of the world today.

How do religious groups, operating as NGOs, engage in the most important global institution for world peace? What processes do they adopt? Is there a “spiritual” UN today? This book is the first interdisciplinary study to present extensive fieldwork results from an examination of the activity of religious groups at the United Nations in New York and Geneva. Based on a three and half-year study of activities in the United Nations system, it seeks to show how “religion” operates in both visible and invisible ways.Jeremy Carrette, Hugh Miall, Verena Beittinger-Lee, Evelyn Bush and Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud, explore the way “religion” becomes a “chameleon” idea, appearing and disappearing, according to the diplomatic aims and ambitions. Part 1 documents the challenges of examining religion inside the UN, Part 2 explores the processes and actions of religious NGOs - from diplomacy to prayer - and the specific platforms of intervention – from committees to networks – and Part 3 provides a series of case studies of religious NGOs, including discussion of Islam, Catholicism and Hindu and Buddhist NGOs. The study concludes by examining the place of diplomats and their views of religious NGOs and reflects on the place of “religion” in the UN today. The study shows the complexity of “religion” inside one of the most fascinating global institutions of the world today.