Re-Enchantment of the West

Christopher Partridge is Professor of Contemporary Religion at University College Chester. His research and writing focuses on Western alternative spiritualities and popular culture.

• Introduction; Part 1: The Disenchantment And Re-enchantment Of The West 1. The Disenchantment of the West; Types of Secularization; Max Weber and the Disenchantment of the World; What Secularization is Not; Rationalization and Pluralism; Conclusion; 2. Understanding New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities; Max Weber on Sectarianism and Charisma; Ernst Troeltsch on Churches, Sects and Mysticism; H.R. Niebuhr on Sectarianism; Bryan Wilson on Sectarianism; Towards a Typology of the New Religious Life Secularization, New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities; 3. The Re-enchantment of the West Disenchantment as the Precursor to Re-enchantment; Non-traditional Religious Vitality; Re-enchantment and De-exotification; Concluding Comments; Part 2: The Significance Of Occulture; 4. Occulture; The Cultic Milleu and Mystical Religion Occulture; New Age Occulture: the Significance of the Self; The Priority of Experience and a Hermeneutic of Suspicion; Romanticizing the Premodern; Pagan Occulture; Concluding Comments; 5. Easternization? Turning East; East Meets West; The Significance of the 1893 World Parliament of Religions; A Revolution of Consciousness: the Sacralizing Significance of the 1960s; Eastern Teachers in Western Traditions; Easternization? Problems and Proposals; Quasi-religion, Instrumental Activism, and Syncretism; 6. Popular Occulture; Popular Culture as Religious Text? The Dilution Thesis; The Significance of Popular Culture; Supernatural Horror: Vampire Fiction Cool Occulture; Popular Sacred Narratives; 7. Popular Occulture: The Significance of Sound Adorno and Popular Music; The Occultural Significance of Popular Music Festival Culture; Psychedelic Trance Culture; Practising the Sacred Art of Dub; Concluding Comments; Bibliography; Index

'[a] useful contribution...if you want a more in-depth treatment you will find this rewarding, largely free of jargon and containing useful summaries of important debates...a good and well-argued assessment of the contemporary situation...listen to Partridge's largely excellent analysis of culture; there is much here to inform. I, for one, will certainly eagerly await the next volume'