| Summary: | 博士 === 國立交通大學 === 社會與文化研究所 === 106 === The so-called New Age is always seen as an individualized or privatized form of religion. Some take it as self-religion, in which the concept of spirituality is regarded as a way for people to be close to the sanctity, while some consider the rise of the New Age a result of secularization and consumerism. Under these circumstances, the spiritual practices here are merely treated as religious goods for every individual/customer.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the mind-body‐spirit market in Taiwan and to verify the concept of self-religion or individualized form of religion. I use the concept of "spiritual capital" as a theoretical tool to analyze the competition in the field.
From my research, I found that lots of the New Agers belong to the new middle class who face the crisis of status ambiguity. In order to deal with their status anxiety, they are engaged in spiritual therapy to construct their own identity.
That is to say, New Age is much more than an individualized form of religion, which wrongly implies those New Agers are people in a good social position. Also, the term "spirituality" here is strategically used by those New Agers when they are trying to struggle with the established religions or bigger fractions of spiritual field. In other words, the discourse of spirituality is somehow transformed to legitimate their social status.
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