East is East, except when it's West: the Easternization thesis and the Western habitus

An exercise in hermeneutical suspicion, this article engages the extent to which the burgeoning appearance of ostensibly Eastern concepts and practices within everyday late-modern discourse and practice can actually be said to represent a thoroughgoing "Easternization" of Western culture....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of religion & society
Main Author: Dawson, Andrew 1966- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Creighton University 2006
In: The journal of religion & society
Further subjects:B Civilization
B Bourdieu
B Pierre
B Colin C
B Campbell
B Occidental
B Technology and civilization
B East and West
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Summary:An exercise in hermeneutical suspicion, this article engages the extent to which the burgeoning appearance of ostensibly Eastern concepts and practices within everyday late-modern discourse and practice can actually be said to represent a thoroughgoing "Easternization" of Western culture. Using insights from Pierre Bourdieu, this article argues that Eastern themes have been appropriated by successive generations in the West relative to a range of hermeneutical dynamics, most relevant of which aretechnologizedconceptualizations of the self, adepersonalizedview of the cosmos, and themetaphorizationof the modern cultural field. Holding that appropriated Eastern concepts and practices have been tailored to the contours of the Western habitus, the article concludes that what we have is more of a westernization of eastern themes than an Easternization of the western paradigm. The hermeneutics of suspicion detailed in the article thereby raises doubts concerning the extent to which purportedly eastern-looking "counter cultural" movements such as theosophy, the new age, and contemporary mysticisms/spiritualities actually run "counter" to the Western culture they purport to reject.
ISSN:1522-5658
Contains:Enthalten in: The journal of religion & society
Persistent identifiers:HDL: 10504/64547