1. What is the main argument of your book?
This book is about religious exoticism. Surprisingly it is a theme that has not, as yet, been investigated by the sociology of religion. Yet, the popularisation of yoga and meditation, the curiosity for shamanism and the recent craze for kabbalah all demonstrate the appeal of these religious resources in western contemporary societies. It is in part their perceived otherness that lends them authenticity and nourishes hope for the discovery of mysteries and hidden truths. However, such popularisation has not led to mass conversions to Buddhism, Hinduism or Judaism. Indeed, religious exoticism implies a deeply ambivalent relationship to otherness and to religion itself: traditional religious teachings are uprooted and fragmented in order to be appropriated as practical methods for personal growth. As a consequence, religious exoticism tells us as much about the ways in which religious resources are disseminated globally as it does about the construction of the self in contemporary societies. How these ‘exotic’ religious resources cross cultural boundaries and become global, what makes them appealing in western societies, how they are instrumentalised and for what purposes, are the questions that this book addresses, by drawing on cross-national research about ‘neo-Hindu’ religions in the West since the 1960s and the recent interest for kabbalah. While it is often written that individuals increasingly craft their religious life and identity by picking and mixing from a wide range of religious traditions, this book by contrast insists on the fact that bricolage is neither personal, playful nor eclectic. It shows that in bricolage, otherness matters tremendously and arouses ambivalent feelings. It also identifies the historical and socio-cultural logics that shape social practices of bricolage.
2. What motivated your work?
The desire to define a common framework allowing us to understand ‘religious exoticism’ (the fascination for the religion of others), and hence the features of the popularization of Hinduism, Buddhism, shamanism, Sufism, or kabbalah. In addition, I wanted to contribute to sociological debates about bricolage and religious individualism: the sociology of religion has often approached the exploration of foreign religious traditions as a characteristic of a social world which has broken with tradition and historicity. In such a world, emancipated individuals are believed to choose, consume and combine religious resources of all kind in unique assortments, thereby elaborating personal, hence unique, religious identities and systems. This book aimed to demonstrate that this understanding of bricolage with foreign religions largely over-estimates its eclecticism, takes for granted the availability of religious resources, misunderstands religious individualism. Overall, inflating the eclectic and personal nature of practices of bricolage has led to a neglect of their social and cultural logics. Ultimately, beyond an understanding of religious exoticism and the logics of bricolage, this study is inscribed inside a larger effort to address important weaknesses of today’s sociology of religion, in particular what we could call the ‘the demise of the social’. Indeed, the sociology of religion often remains isolated from wider sociological debates; it privileges the detailed descriptions of religious experiences and beliefs to the detriment of consideration of social class, family organization, power and authority. The current tendency to over-estimate personal subjectivity, “choice” and “freedom” in the making of bricolage, or in the study of “spirituality”, makes these flaws of the sociology of religion even more acute.
3. What theory or theorists inform your methodology?
The book argues for the need for the sociology of religion to reintegrate issues of power, class formation, social interactions, and practice, and to renew the understanding of religious individualism. Accordingly, it draws on the sociology of religion, but also on mainstream sociology dealing with class (ie. Bourdieu, Skeggs), neoliberalism (Castel, Rose, Ehrenberg) as well as work, gender, consumption, therapies and wellbeing etc.
4. How might the book be used or how has it been used in a classroom?
While covering popular and topical issues such as kabbalah, the ‘mystical East’, and celebrities’ engagement with religious exoticism, this book enhances our understanding of the globalisation of religion (how religions are disseminated transnationally), syncretism and bricolage (how religions are modified through cultural encounters) and of religious life in neoliberal societies (how contemporary forms of religiosity reflects core features of contemporary social life). An in-depth investigation of ‘religious exoticism’ is in itself innovative and fills a void, but the book’s strength is also that it engages equally with French-speaking and English-speaking academic works that are rarely combined and confronted in today’s sociology of religion. This allows English-speaking students to access debates within the subfield which are not published in English.
5. How do you think students would most benefit from your book?
Drawing on research I have undertaken among Hindu-based movements in France and Britain since the mid-1990s, and more recently on the Kabbalah Centre in France, Britain, Brazil and Israel, this book offers an example of how one can undertake qualitative and cross-cultural empirical investigations and of the benefits of such approach. Ultimately, this book suggests an agenda for the future sociology of religion; it is hoped it will inspire future scholars to adopt a more critical approach and to reintegrate the social in their understanding of religion.
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