A sociology of religion of "post-spirituality": the case of spiritual therapy dropouts

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K12205
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 01030:Religious studies-related
• Research Institution: Chiba University
• Principal Investigator: Gaitanidis Ioannis 千葉大学, 大学院国際学術研究院, 准教授 (90715856)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: スピリチュアリティ / 「霊感商法」 / 消費問題 / 宗教と消費 / 消費の道徳性 / 架空請求

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research project aimed to understand the criticism against spirituality coming from people who claimed to have once been ‘insiders’. In the first half of the project, the analysis of 504 blog entries written by these ‘spirituality ditchers’revealed that their critiques were not targeting spirituality itself, but the morality of capitalist transactions framed as ‘spiritual’. This led me, in the second half of the project, to consider through an examination of 306 court judgements (from the late 1980s to 2020), the kinds of consumer claims usually associated with 'spiritual' services. This research pointed me towards the existence of structural and moral commonalities between today’s rising problem of fictitious billing and the increase in the number of trials dealing with the so-called spiritual sales.
This project funded the conduct of 7 research presentations, 1 research article, 1 book chapter, 1 co-authored dialogue and 1 monograph (to be published in November 2022).

Free Research Field

宗教研究

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

「宗教と消費」のことについて、「と」抜きで語るにはどうしたらいいのだろうか。言い換えれば、今までの宗教研究の中で、この組み合わせが並置的に（「宗教と消費」）あるいは相互還元的に（「宗教的消費」、「消費的宗教」）しか語られることがなかったが、今回の研究で分かったのは、近年の「宗教っぽい」サービスをめぐるクレームが「宗教と消費」の新たな語り方を可能としている。脱スピ論者が訴えてきた問題は、架空請求が一般的な消費者被害となっている現代社会が理想とする道徳的消費像を反映している。そこで「架空」の中身を定義し、その合法的範囲を確定しようとしている市場や宗教には共通的意図があるのではないと議論できる。