RT Article
T1 East is East, except when it's West: the Easternization thesis and the Western habitus
JF The journal of religion & society
VO 8
A1 Dawson, Andrew 1966-
LA English
PB Creighton University
YR 2006
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1816372064
AB 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.
K1 Bourdieu
K1 Campbell
K1 Civilization
K1 Colin C
K1 East and West
K1 Occidental
K1 Pierre
K1 Technology and civilization