New Age: A Guide

by Daren Kemp

Overview

Prizewinner in the twenty-fifth annual AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS for 2004, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation.What is New Age? Crystals, meditation and astrology. T'ai Chi, Reiki and Feng Shui. Reflexology, aromatherapy and past-life regression. Esalen, the Findhorn Community and Damanhur. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra and David Spangler.But many such examples of alternative spiritualities are explicitly not New Age - and few practitioners now describe themselves as New Age. Scholars cannot agree on a definition of New Age, or even whether it exists at all!"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748615322
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Daren Kemp is Reviews Editor at the Journal of New Age Studies

Table of Contents

I. Overview and Starting Definition; 2. The Course: A Case Study; 3. History of Ideas; 4. Philosophy; 5. Anthropology; 6. Sociology; 7. Psychology; 8. Non-Academic Approaches to New Age; 9. Academic Literature Survey; 10. Future; References.

What People are Saying About This

James R. Lewis

A nuanced, meticulously researched overview of different approaches to the New Age. In addition to being an ideal textbook, this work contains the most comprehensive, up-to-date literature review in the burgeoning field of New Age studies. A must read for anyone with a serious interest in this area.

— James R. Lewis, University of Wisconsin

Editorial Reviews

This concise but challenging 200-page book describes and critiques different scholarly approaches to studying NRMs.

Choice

This is a very good book. Indeed, as a basic introduction to the many facets of the 'New Age' phenomenon, it would be hard to beat. It manages to combine descriptive accounts of various aspects of New Age spirituality with reflection on its wider significance, and to do so in a highly readable format. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is the way it offers summaries of a vast number of existing studies, both published and unpublished, demonstrating a remarkable ability by the author to combine large amounts of material into a readable synthesis ... a well written book that deserves to be widely read and appreciated.

For the serious student or researcher… Kemp provides an excellent guide to the academic resources that can be brought to bear on the phenomenon.

Concise but challenging.

From the Publisher