Sociology Department, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives on Religion and Economy: Emerging Spiritualities and the Future of Work

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">This paper is an inquiry into the blooming sector of personal and spiritual development in contemporary Romania. It is based on interviews with providers of such services, on content analysis of blogs and books dedicated to the topic, and on participation in several workshops. The critical literature linking the proliferation of the field of personal and spiritual development with the increasing pervasiveness of neoliberal logic has highlighted some of the features of the subjectivity invoked in these programmes: the sovereignty of the self in relation to its environment, the lack of importance of social ties and solidarity, and the lack of importance of the community. This analysis explores the empirical material in searching for the main points of ambivalence in relation to these desiderates, as well as the mutations that can be identified in the privileged sites of production of individuality that are personal and spiritual development workshops and trainings. <xref ref-type="fn" rid="j_subbs-2016-0008_fn_001_w2aab2b8b8b1b7b1ab1aaAa">2</xref></abstract>

Personal and Spiritual Development in Contemporary Romania: In Search of Ambivalence

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The present paper investigates how the <italic>Bridge Budapest</italic>, a CSR organization founded by leading Hungarian IT startups, attempts to shape the values of Hungarian society towards capitalism in general, and towards entrepreneurship in particular. In my paper I argue that the central aim of the organization is to facilitate Hungary’s catching up with the core capitalist countries through the transformation of the attitudes and the ideologies surrounding capitalism in the Hungarian context, i.e. <italic>the local spirit of capitalism</italic>. This consists, on the one hand, of restoring the legitimation of some of the core institutions of capitalism, such as the enterprise and the entrepreneur, and of confronting the risk-taking, innovative and ethical figure of the entrepreneur hero with the provincial figure of the ‘postcommunist cheater’. On the other hand, it also consists of propagating a new management of work that aims to produce self-controlling and self-motivating employees. In the narrative of Bridge Budapest IT companies appear as the perfect moral and economic subjects – the bearers of the new spirit of capitalism – that have the expertise to offer solutions to the problems of Hungarian society, and around which the local capitalism should be built.</abstract>

New Spirit and New Hero: How Hungarian Startups Redefine the Ideas of Local Capitalism

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">This paper addresses the consequences of practicing personal development upon the daily life and interactions of individuals. In this context, I will describe how practitioners are applying the principles and techniques of personal development in order to transform the way individuals are relating to themselves and to others. In parallel, I will analyse how the ideology of personal development is assumed, by negotiation, in connection with the neoliberal project. This article aims to bridge a gap in the literature by showing how practicing personal development can restructure everyday experiences, emphasizing the negotiation of the intrinsic values of personal development techniques and how it (re)configures relationships and social interactions.</abstract>

I Am Worthy, I Want, and I Can: The Social Implications of Practicing Personal Development

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Intra-EU labour migration literature is fairly limited within migration studies and it has seldom considered migrants' embodied experiences and processes of subjectivation as a constitutive element of translocal economic transformations. The present paper focuses on the popular economies enacted by a segment of the migrant working class moving from Vicovu de Sus in Suceava district, Romania to Turin, Italy after 1989 as entangled in the production of “neoliberalism from below” (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_subbs-2016-0011_ref_035_w2aab2b8c11b1b7b1ab1ac35Aa">Gago, 2015</xref>). Mobilizing oral histories collected during an ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2012 and 2013, I will present some aspects related to the fields of <italic>production</italic> and <italic>reproduction</italic> within the movements of migrants belonging to a pentecostal community affiliated to the <italic>Cultul Penticostal – Biserica lui Dumnezeu Apostolică</italic>. Pentecostalism is here understood as a performative regime of truth and practices (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_subbs-2016-0011_ref_034_w2aab2b8c11b1b7b1ab1ac34Aa">Foucault, 1987</xref>; <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_subbs-2016-0011_ref_048_w2aab2b8c11b1b7b1ab1ac48Aa">Marshall, 2009</xref>), through which migrant bodies perform processes of subjectivation to actively “inhabit” the borders of the State and Capital. Bukovinean pentecostal discourse, through an entrepreneurial drive, a cultural shift towards material prosperity and a strict gendered division of labour, seems to have fostered the creation of a self-organized translocal community whose economic practices obey/re-enact rather than escape/re-signify the dynamics of exploitation and dispossession proper of Romania's peripheral incorporation into contemporary global regimes of production, accumulation and division of labour.</abstract>

The Ambivalent Autonomy of Mobile “Pocăiți” between Vicovu de Sus, Romania and Turin, Italy after 1989

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">My paper focuses on the shift in religious values in post-socialist Romania and explores the emergence of alternative spiritual beliefs and practices among the younger generations socialized during the post-communist period. It analyses some of the changes that occurred in the wider traditional religious field and looks at the various spiritualized technologies of the self that produce a distinctive type of religious subjectivity and an immanent ethics of authenticity. By departing from the idea of an integrated religious community and from the relational understanding of religious transformation, the field of alternative spiritualities operates a radical break with traditional religion and emphasizes the possibility of spiritual self-realization and self-discovery. It is this process of the individualizing sacralization of the self that constitutes the object of various workshops, blogs, personal and spiritual development literature, courses, spiritual retreats and counselling services. My research looks at how innovative technologies of the self are developed within these spaces that emphasize creativity, wellbeing and a new understanding of subjective interiority that learns how to find in itself the resources it needs to live in a spiritualized ontology of the present.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="j_subbs-2016-0012_fn_001_w2aab2b8c13b1b7b1ab1aaAa">2</xref></abstract>

Alternative Forms of Spirituality and the Socialization of a Self-Enhancing Subjectivity: Features of the Post-Secular Religious Space in Contemporary Romania

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The aim of the present paper is to analyse how individuals in contemporary Romania come to adopt a new life-style centred on the self and how new forms of spirituality contribute to this project. In order to document how powerfully immersed alternative forms of spirituality (yoga practices, transcendental meditation, bioenergy, holistic medicine etc.) and subjectification techniques (personal development, motivational practices) look like for people in Romania, I have combined participant observations with semi-structured in-depth interviews. First of all I have reviewed the literature on spirituality and self-development and overviewed the specific techniques of subjectification. These techniques have the <italic>power</italic> to change the individual’s view of life and have elements that serve the neoliberal <italic>governmentality</italic>. To continue, I have attended courses and workshops centred on spiritual development to uncover the communalities between literature and discourses on change. I was mainly interested in analysing the discourse of trainers, speakers and religious guiders and outlining the participants’ experiences, while understanding how they utilise the knowledge and support given throughout these courses when trying to enhance their day-to-day lives and careers. <xref ref-type="fn" rid="j_subbs-2016-0013_fn_001_w2aab2b8b1b1b7b1ab1aaAa">2</xref></abstract>

Steps on Life Change and Spiritual Transformation: The Project of the Self

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">In line with socio-anthropological theories meant to deconstruct the secularization teleology (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_subbs-2016-0014_ref_001_w2aab2b8b4b1b7b1ab1b1b1Aa">Berger, 1997</xref>; <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_subbs-2016-0014_ref_018_w2aab2b8b4b1b7b1ab1b1c18Aa">Luckmann, 1967</xref>; <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_subbs-2016-0014_ref_023_w2aab2b8b4b1b7b1ab1b1c23Aa">Shah, 2015</xref>), this paper aims to document recent transformations in the field of Spirituality and Religion. Inheriting the analytical dichotomy between neo-liberal and anti-capitalist forms of spirituality, introduced by <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_subbs-2016-0014_ref_004_w2aab2b8b4b1b7b1ab1b1b4Aa">Carette and King (2005)</xref>, I aim to emphasize both the common points and the ruptures between the subjectification technologies used within transformative self-development and self-help programmes, on the one hand, and a form of alternative Neo-Pagan spirituality, which opposes the capitalist way of organizing social, economic, political and cultural life, on the other hand. The rupture between anti-capitalist and neo-liberal forms of spirituality rests on identifying the extent to which the spiritual domain is colonized by an economically mundane ideology, in which the subject is invited to look upon spirituality as an internal resource meant to satisfy all the tropes of the neo-liberal economic imagery: optimization, efficiency, amplified productivity, abundance and prosperity. In addition to the ethnographic justification of this theoretical construct that supports the existence of two opposed poles of constituting a spiritual self, I will adjoin the cultural relationship between spirituality and capitalism to the wider problem of secularization, by arguing that spirituality is a byproduct of late modernity and a leitmotif of the power technologies through which the neo-liberal subject is produced. <xref ref-type="fn" rid="j_subbs-2016-0014_fn_001_w2aab2b8b4b1b7b1ab1aaAa">2</xref></abstract>

The Quest for the Spiritual Self: Anti-Capitalist and Neo-Liberal Forms of Spirituality in Contemporary Romania

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Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia

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