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OPEN SESSION: "Contemporary spiritualities" and "New Age" : Ethnographic and historical-comparative approaches to a transnational FieldAnnual conference of the European Association for the Study of Religion (EASR), 19-21 June 2018, Bern (Switzerland).AbstractWhile the first theorists of secularization foresaw the gradual disappearance of religion from the public sphere, others observed a reorganization or even a &#8220;return of the sacred&#8221; on a worldwide scale (Berger 1994). Aside from fundamentalisms which strongly uphold the idea of &#8220;tradition&#8221; and strengthen borders, new forms of religious expression have appeared transnationally, most often deinstitutionalized and integrated in civil society: for example, the &#8220;new religious movements&#8221; (Campbell 2002; Barker 2013), and especially the more diffused and nebulous networks, groups and movements known under the generic terms of &#8220;New Age&#8221; and &#8220;contemporary spiritualities&#8221;. The participants in these settings consider themselves more &#8220;spiritual than religious&#8221; or even &#8220;spiritual but not religious&#8221; (Houtman &#38; Aupers 2007; Streib 2008; Streib &#38; Hood 2011). Some sociologists speak therefore of a &#8220;spiritual revolution&#8221; (Heelas 2002), characterized by the decline of religious institutions and the rise of holistic beliefs which privilege the inner transformation of the individual, while others focus on the emergence of a worldwide &#8220;spiritual market&#8221;. What is sure is that New Age and contemporary spiritualities encompass a wide variety of representations that draw on personal development, oriental religions and philosophies, indigenous wisdom like Amerindianism and druidism, Western esotericism, eco-spirituality, quantum physics, and so on. Recently the imprecise and controversial term &#8220;New Age&#8221; has set off many debates in the social sciences of religion and is also sometimes rejected by the social actors themselves, as it can be synonymous with a kind of &#8220;inauthenticity&#8221;. Sutcliffe (2003), for example, deconstructs epistemologically the notion of &#8220;New Age movement&#8221; &#8211; a false analytical category that has, nonetheless, come to be firmly rooted in the sociology of new religious movements &#8211; and argues that the phenomenon needs to be understood as a field of action &#8211; i.e. in relation to surrounding religious and cultural phenomena. Others authors criticize the notion of &#8220;spirituality&#8221; as a category for scientific analysis, and question the problematic distinction &#8220;free spirituality / organised religion&#8221;, arguing that spirituality must be seen as a form of discipline of the self, which is by no means less social and normative than &#8220;religion&#8221; (Altglas, forthcoming).This session seeks to explore these new forms of transnational religiosity expressed through the notions of &#8220;spiritualities&#8221; and &#8220;New Age&#8221; from the perspectives of ethnography and the comparative social history of religion. We encourage thus papers that explore at least one of these topics:epistemological debates and issues of terminology (with their applications, benefits and limitations);models of fields, networks and other forms of relationship &#8211; synchronic or diachronic;practices such as &#8220;syncretism&#8221;, &#8220;religious exoticism&#8221; (Altglas 2014), religious and intercultural (re)appropriations;situations of mobility and of transnationalization of actors, contents, objects and images (Capone 2004);how culture &#8220;shapes&#8221; bodily experiences within &#8220;contemporary spiritualities&#8221;;gender perspectives on participation and transmission.&#160;Submission guidelinesTo submit, please create an account here :&#160;https://www.conftool.com/easr2018/index.php?page=newPaper&#38;form_contributiontypeID=23&#38;newpaper=trueDeadline:&#160;15th&#160;Jan&#160;2018,&#160;11:59:59pm&#160;CET.Co-chairsThomas Witzeling (Uni Lausanne),Prof. Steven Sutcliffe (Uni Edimburgh),Man&#233;li Farahmand (Uni Lausanne).contacts:&#160;thomas.witzeling@unil.ch,&#160;maneli.farahmand@unil.ch,&#160;s.sutcliffe@ed.ac.uk