The New Age Movement; - ReStore (PDF)

EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE Jury: Klaus EDER, Humboldt Universität, Berlin, FR Germany (Supervisor) Mario DIANI, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom Christian JOPPKE, European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy Ákos RÓNA-TAS, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, United States The New Age Movement: Genesis of a High Volume, Low Impact Identity Dissertation May 5, 2000 Thomas König Department of Social and Political Sciences European University Institute Via dei Rocettini 9 I-50016 San Domenico di Fiesole (Fi) Italy tel. +49 (551) 39 7221 fax. +49 (55) 39 7341 [email protected]  i TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 New Age: A High Volume, Low Impact Identity..........................................1 A First Glimpse at New Age...................................................................................................... 6 The Societal Context.................................................................................................................. 6 2 Theory: The Literature ...................................................................................9 2.1 The Concept of a Social Movement..............................................................................9 2.1.1 Types of Collective Action ................................................................................................... 9 2.1.2 Social Movements............................................................................................................... 11 2.1.3 New Movements?................................................................................................................ 13 2.1.4 Other Movement Types....................................................................................................... 18 2.1.5 The Empirical Case: New Age............................................................................................ 18 2.2 Sociology of Religion Approaches ..............................................................................21 2.2.1 The Lofland-Stark Model.................................................................................................... 23 2.2.2 Cult/Sect Theory ................................................................................................................. 25 2.2.3 The New Religious Movement Paradigm ........................................................................... 26 2.2.4 Religious Markets ............................................................................................................... 28 2.3 Social Movement Approaches.....................................................................................28 2.3.1 Mass Society Theory........................................................................................................... 29 2.3.2 Collective Behavior and Relative Deprivation.................................................................... 31 2.3.3 Action Sociology................................................................................................................. 33 2.3.4 Strategy and Identity ........................................................................................................... 33 2.3.5 Strategy ............................................................................................................................... 34 Rational Choice Proper............................................................................................................ 34 Taxonomy of Groups......................................................................................................................... 34 The Critique....................................................................................................................................... 35 Analytical Marxism ................................................................................................................. 37 Strands of Resource Mobilization Theory ............................................................................... 38 Resource Mobilization Proper........................................................................................................... 39 Political Process Model ..................................................................................................................... 41 Critique.............................................................................................................................................. 44 2.3.6 Identity ................................................................................................................................ 45 New Social Movement Theories.............................................................................................. 45 New Values ....................................................................................................................................... 46 New Organization and Action Forms................................................................................................ 50 New Risks.......................................................................................................................................... 51 New Classes....................................................................................................................................... 51 Constructionism....................................................................................................................... 52 2.3.7 Political Process à la Constructionism ................................................................................ 53  ii 3 Theory: The Model ........................................................................................55 3.1 Overview.......................................................................................................................55 Collective Identity and Collective Action Frames................................................................... 55 The State .................................................................................................................................. 57 Social Class Position................................................................................................................ 57 Movement Organization and Recruitment Patterns................................................................. 58 Political and Cultural Impact ................................................................................................... 59 3.2 The Central Variable: Collective Identity.................................................................62 3.2.1 Collective Identity and Collective Action........................................................................... 62 Identity as a Resource.............................................................................................................. 62 Identity as Stabilizing Element for Modern Societies ............................................................. 62 Identity as a Goal in itself........................................................................................................ 63 Identity as a Prerequisite for Collective Action....................................................................... 63 3.2.2 The Concept of Collective Identity ..................................................................................... 64 Primordialism........................................................................................................................... 66 Collective Memory .................................................................................................................. 69 Structuralism............................................................................................................................ 71 A Remark on Catnet .......................................................................................................................... 74 Excursus: Class Structure as Analytical Concept.............................................................................. 75 Social Constructionism............................................................................................................ 76 The Concept of Collective Identity ................................................................................................... 76 A Typology of Collective Identities .................................................................................................. 80 3.3 Explanatory Variables.................................................................................................82 3.3.1 Identity Discourses.............................................................................................................. 83 Identity Fields .......................................................................................................................... 83 Framing Processes ................................................................................................................... 84 Narrative Fidelity and Empirical Credibility ........................................................................... 85 Masterframes............................................................................................................................ 87 3.3.2 Explanatory Variables......................................................................................................... 89  iii Resources and Organization .................................................................................................... 89 Social Structural Variables ...................................................................................................... 91 4 Data..................................................................................................................92 4.1 Exploratory Field Study..............................................................................................92 Access to the Field................................................................................................................... 93 4.2 Newspaper Data ...........................................................................................................94 Data Universe and Sample Properties...................................................................................... 95 Variable Vector........................................................................................................................ 96 4.3 Other Data Sources......................................................................................................98 New Age Literature.................................................................................................................. 99 Computer Mediated Communication Data .............................................................................. 99 Internet Websites............................................................................................................................. 100 Usenet Newsgroups......................................................................................................................... 100 Government Reports.............................................................................................................. 101 4.4 Different “National Cultures,” Different Cases?....................................................102 5 What and who is New Age?.........................................................................104 5.1 The New Age Market.................................................................................................104 5.2 Major New Age Practices..........................................................................................106 Religious Field....................................................................................................................... 107 Occult Practices ..................................................................................................................... 109 Channeling....................................................................................................................................... 109 Other Clairvoyance Practices .......................................................................................................... 110 UFO current..................................................................................................................................... 110 Alternative Health Practices................................................................................................... 110 Psychological Practices.......................................................................................................... 111 Alternative Science................................................................................................................ 112 What Does Not Belong to New Age...................................................................................... 112 5.3 The Temporal Limits of New Age ............................................................................113 5.4 Some Reviews of New Age Literature......................................................................120 5.4.1 Marilyn Ferguson: “The Aquarian Conspiracy”............................................................... 121 5.4.2 Shirley MacLaine: “Out on a Limb” ................................................................................. 123 5.4.3 Carlos Castaneda: “The Teachings of Don Juan” ............................................................. 125 5.4.4 Shakti Gawain: “Creative Visualization”.......................................................................... 127 5.4.5 Betty J. Eadie: “Embraced By The Light”......................................................................... 129 5.4.6 James Redfield: “The Celestine Prophecy”....................................................................... 130 5.4.7 Commonalties Among the Reviewed Literature............................................................... 132  iv Biographical Similarities ....................................................................................................... 132 Stylistic Parallels.................................................................................................................... 134 Keyed Frames ........................................................................................................................ 135 5.5 Symbols of Unity ........................................................................................................136 5.5.1 New Age Music................................................................................................................. 136 5.5.2 Other Symbols................................................................................................................... 137 5.6 New Age’s Gender Bias .............................................................................................138 6 Identity Discourses and Collective Action Frames...................................141 6.1 Protagonists ................................................................................................................144 6.2 Antagonists .................................................................................................................150 6.2.1 The Secular Anti-Cult Movement..................................................................................... 150 Recruitment Pool ................................................................................................................... 150 The Brainwashing Metaphor.................................................................................................. 152 New Age as a Cult ................................................................................................................. 154 6.2.2 Christian Fundamentalists................................................................................................. 156 6.3 The State .....................................................................................................................158 6.3.1 The US Polity.................................................................................................................... 159 6.3.2 The German Polity ............................................................................................................ 160 Incorporation of New Age within the New Religious Movement Phenomenon ................... 162 New Age as Deviant Behavior............................................................................................... 166 Medicalization of New Age................................................................................................... 166 The New Age Market............................................................................................................. 168 6.4 Audiences: New Age Discourse in the Mass Media ................................................171 6.4.1 New Age is Soft News ...................................................................................................... 173 Detailed Break-up of Soft News Categories.......................................................................... 174 Music and Book Sections ................................................................................................................ 175 Lifestyle Section.............................................................................................................................. 176 Yellow Press.................................................................................................................................... 177 Religion Section .............................................................................................................................. 177 Letters to the Editor......................................................................................................................... 178 Implications of Soft News Categorization............................................................................. 178 When does New Age become Hard News? ........................................................................... 181 News on Collective Action by New Age: The Case of Harmonic Convergence................... 183 Conclusions............................................................................................................................ 185 6.4.2 New Age Frames............................................................................................................... 186  v The Cult Frame ...................................................................................................................... 187 Elements of the Frame..................................................................................................................... 187 Usage of the Frame in the Media..................................................................................................... 189 Narrative Fidelity............................................................................................................................. 192 Consequences for Collective Action Frames................................................................................... 193 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................... 195 New Age Proper Frame ......................................................................................................... 196 Artificiality ...................................................................................................................................... 199 Unprofessionality ............................................................................................................................ 200 Ambiguity........................................................................................................................................ 202 Consequences for Collective Action Frames................................................................................... 204 Yin-and-Yang Frame ............................................................................................................. 207 Innovation........................................................................................................................................ 208 Eclecticism ...................................................................................................................................... 210 Location in the Paper....................................................................................................................... 212 Empirical Adequacy of the Three-Frame-Model................................................................... 212 6.4.3 Sources.............................................................................................................................. 219 6.4.4 Differences Across Nation States...................................................................................... 221 6.5 New Age: A Mass Behavior Identity........................................................................223 6.5.1 The Failure to Generate Collective Action........................................................................ 224 6.5.2 The Persistence of Mass Behavior .................................................................................... 226 7 From Organization to Identity ...................................................................229 7.1 Organizational Fields: New Age vs. New Social Movements.................................230 7.1.1 New Age: Business Organizations.................................................................................... 230 Degree of Proliferation .......................................................................................................... 231 Conditions for the Proliferated Market.................................................................................. 233 7.1.2 New Social Movements: Institutionally Supported Volunteerism.................................... 238 7.2 Impact of the Organizational Structure on Collective Identity.............................241 7.2.1 Universalism ..................................................................................................................... 242 New Age Discourses.............................................................................................................. 242 Proliferation in the New Social Movements.......................................................................... 245 Impact of Universalism on Movement Actions ..................................................................... 246 Conditions for Universalism.................................................................................................. 247 7.2.2 Traditionalism and Primordialism..................................................................................... 248 New Age Discourses.............................................................................................................. 249 Essentialism in the New Social Movements.......................................................................... 252 7.3 Collective Identity Type and Collective Action Potential ......................................256 8 Recruitment to New Age..............................................................................257 8.1 Recruitment Pools......................................................................................................257 8.2 Networks and Mobilization: Competing Hypotheses.............................................259 8.2.1 Network Thesis ................................................................................................................. 259  vi 8.2.2 Availability Thesis ............................................................................................................ 260 8.3 Synthesis......................................................................................................................264 8.3.1 Poor People’s Movements................................................................................................. 265 8.3.2 Middle American Movements........................................................................................... 266 8.3.3 New Middle Class Movements ......................................................................................... 268 8.4 Impact on Organizational Form...............................................................................270 8.5 Summary.....................................................................................................................272 9 Conclusion.....................................................................................................274 9.1 Summary of Results...................................................................................................274 9.1.1 The Class Basis of New Age............................................................................................. 274 9.1.2 The Organizational Problem: New Age as an Industry..................................................... 277 9.1.3 The Impact of Market Forces on Ideology: New Age as Mass Movement....................... 277 9.1.4 Political and Social Impact................................................................................................ 279 9.2 Implication for Democratic Theory .........................................................................281 9.3 Implications for Movement Theory .........................................................................291 9.3.1 A Renaissance for Mass Society Theory?......................................................................... 291 9.3.2 A Renaissance for Resource Mobilization Theory?.......................................................... 294 9.3.3 The Impact of Social Movements onto Social Movement Research................................. 296 Literature............................................................................................................. I Appendix.........................................................................................................XLI  vii ABSTRACT Die Dissertation The New Age Movement: A High Volume, Low Impact Identity untersucht Erfolg und Mißerfolg der New-Age-Bewegung. Fragestellung Die New-Age-Bewegung verfügt in Amerika wie in Europa über eine erstaunlich große Gefolgschaft, die zahlenmäßig politisch und gesellschaftlich weitaus einflußreichere Bewegungen wie Friedens- oder Ökologiebewegung bei weitem übertrifft. Dennoch scheint New Age zwar zum Teil gravierende Änderungen in den Lebensgewohnheiten seiner Anhänger/-innen hervorzurufen, aber kaum Einfluß auf gesamtgesellschaftliche Prozesse zu nehmen. Diese Folgenlosigkeit ist nicht zuletzt auf das Fehlen öffentlichkeitswirksamer kollektiver Aktionen der Bewegungsmitglieder zurückzuführen. Stattdessen konzentrieren sich New Ager auf zwar ähnlich gerichtete aber relativ unkoordinierte Veränderungen ihres individuellen Lebensstiles. New Age ist also eine Massenbewegung mit geringem Potenzial für kollektives Handeln. In dieser Studie wird versucht zu erklären, warum New Age über Jahre hinweg erfolgreich kollektives Verhalten hervorgerufen hat, ohne dabei nennenswertes kollektives Handeln produziert zu haben. Untersuchungsergebnisse New Age verfügt über eine amorphe Identität, deren Identitätsgrenzen von Individuen leicht überschritten werden können. Eine solche Identität eignet sich zwar zur Bindung vieler Individuen, da die Uneindeutigkeit der Identität Konflikte mit individuell unterschiedlichen ideologischen Positionen unwahrscheinlich macht, ist aber einer starken emotionalen Bindung zu der durch die Identität repräsentierte Bewegung abträglich. Eine solche Solidarität und somit kollektives Handeln induzierende emotionale Bindung würde dagegen durch eine “Vernatürlichung” oder zumindest “Traditionalisierung” der Bewegungsmitgliedschaft, wie sie zum Beispiel durch scheinbar eindeutige Askription der Bewegungsmitgliedschaft erfolgen könnte, gefördert. Eine Hinwendung zu einer solchen stärker ausgrenzenden Kollektividentität wird durch die Organisation von New Age als Industrie mit einem extrem niedrigen Konzentrationsgrad stark behindert. Grund für die Dominanz kleiner Familienbetriebe in der New-Age-Bewegungsindustrie ist wiederum die soziale Herkunft der Mitglieder, welche zumeist aus Strata, die über geringe kulturelle Ressourcen verfügen und untereinander nur schwach vernetzt sind, entstammen. Die  viii Begrenzung der kulturellen Ressourcen limitiert dabei das Wachstum der Einzelorganisationen, während der geringe Vernetzungsgrad erst die Gründung formaler Organisationen, die über Gewinne finanziert werden müssen, erforderlich macht.  1 1 NEW AGE: A HIGH VOLUME, LOW IMPACT IDENTITY Considering its size — estimates range from 20,0001 up to 40,000,0002 US-American adherents — New Age has garnered surprisingly little sociological research. In October 1998, Sociological Abstracts counted 81 articles on New Age.3 In contrast, there were 123 references to a small faction of the women’s movement, namely lesbian feminism, and even the tiny Ku Klux Klan with its about 5,000 adherents (Feldman 1990: 244) earned almost as many references as did New Age. Sociological monographs that focus on New Age are equally scarce. In English, one anthology (Lewis & Melton 1992) and three monographs (Bloch 1998; Heelas 1996; York 1995) that approach New Age from a sociological angle exist.4 Sociologists are not the only persons uninterested in New Age; cultural and political elites in general pay little attention to the movement. In fact, even most New Agers are surprisingly indifferent to New Age as a whole. They are quick to denounce their movement and more than willingly drop the New Age label, as participation in New Age movement has been relabeled an “adoption of a wholistic lifestyle” or an “attraction to occult and esoteric practices.” Despite these obstacles, there does exist a huge market for New Age goods and services. According to one estimate, US-Americans spend roughly 4 billion 1990 US-dollars per year alone on New Age seminars (Rupert 1992: 128). Almost all bookstores carry a large New 1 The low-end figure is taken from the 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification (Kosmin & Lachman 1993: table 1-2, p. 17). The authors themselves observe: “Since [New Age] is not a religious group as such, the small numbers who reported [New Age] as religion are not surprising. Probably only the most committed are included here. Many who have had a spiritual experience beyond the confines of traditional definitions of religion in the groups in which they were raised would, if asked directly, admit to New Age beliefs.” (ibid., p.300). Indeed, this study will reveal that most New Agers maintain only feeble ties to the movement. What is more, Unitarian Universalism, a denomination that has been pervaded with New Age ideology (Lee 1995) alone has a following of 502,000 according to the same survey. It is, thus, safe to assume that the actual number of adherents is at least a six-digit, more likely, though, a 7-digit number. 2 This figures is based on the percentage of the US population, which shares some New Age beliefs (ReligiousTolerance.org (ed.): “New Age Spirituality,” <http://www.religioustolerance.org/newage.htm>, April 20, 1999; survey figures stem from Barnia 1993). 3 In 1999, the Beligian sociology of religion journal Social Compass dedicated an entire issue to New Age, which somewhat allieviated the draught in publications. 4 Two German language treatises exist (Stenger 1993; Bochinger 1994) and Hanegraaff’s (1996) history of the New Age movement does also consider some sociological aspects. Most other self-professed “social scientific” literature can be attributed to the anti-cult movement.  New Age: A High Volume, Low Impact Identity 2 Age section, as do most music stores. There are many specialized New Age stores, and a host of New Age professionals offering service ranging from palm reading to past life regressions. New Age is a cross-national phenomenon. You can buy translations of James Redfield’s New Age bestseller The Celestine Prophecy at Eau Claire, Wisconsin’s Waldenbooks, at Kaufhaus des Westens in the heart of Berlin, Germany, or at the check-out of the local esselunga supermarket in Florence, Italy.5 Why is there such a huge discrepancy between the popularity of New Age ideas and the lack of vigor to implement these ideas through collective action? Why do so many people agree with New Age, but do not actively support the movement? More generally, why have new social movements been so much more successful in triggering collective action than new religious movements? These are some of the questions addressed in this thesis, whose main objective is the assessment and development of contemporary movement theory with the help of a usually neglected empirical case, namely New Age. Of course, New Age will also be analyzed in its own right, but the focus will be on theoretical rather than empirical issues. One might, of course, consider the neglect of social movement research for New Age deserved, since the latter lacks two characteristics many scholars consider defining for social movements. Namely, New Age neither aims for political change nor triggers much collective action. While this diagnosis is certainly empirically warranted, I do think that an examination of New Age in the framework of social movement theory enriches the latter. For one, movement theory seems to suffer from a political bias, which could be alleviated through studies on more culturally oriented movements.6 Secondly, the focus on movements that successfully engage in collective action replicates a familiar shortcoming of much empirical research, that is sampling on the dependent variable. Only if movement research will also examine less successful movements, it will be possible to identify necessary conditions for collective action. A study of New Age is thus well suited to improve movement theory. The theoretical framework employed is this study largely follows the currently fashionable fusion of elements of the strategy and identity (Cohen 1985) paradigms. Additionally, some elements of mass society theory (Kornhauser [1959] 1960) have been incorporated. In a nutshell, the main argument of thesis purports that the social structure of movements’ 5 All observations were made in 1997. 6 In addition, the women’s movement has demonstrated, that cultural phenomena might at some point be transferred to the political arena.  New Age: A High Volume, Low Impact Identity 3 recruitment pools determines the availability of organizational resources for the movements in question, which in turn influence identity construction processes. The outcome of these construction processes then shape the socio-political impact of the movement. The adoption of strategy and identity paradigms as guiding frameworks for the present study required the development of redress for two weaknesses both paradigms share, namely the neglect of societal structures and a bias towards rationalism. Both approaches suffer from an under-theorization of the social structures within which movements emerge. Although resource mobilization and political process models are preoccupied with the centrality of resources and networks, they largely ignore the distribution of resources within larger society. Likewise, despite the abundance of contemporary network studies, little attention is paid to the network structure of society as a whole. Instead, network approaches almost exclusively focus on networks endemic to movements. The neglect of the societal structure is not reserved to strategy theories, though. While identity theories do pay attention to social structural elements, these theories are obsessed with those elements that are visible in civil society discourses. Identity studies have focused on their “holy trinity” (Cerulo 1997: 386) of gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity, and economic class, but have rarely systematically explored other structural elements of modern society. Concomitantly, purely sociological concepts such as social connectivity or habitus have been neglected or even jettisoned in favor of concepts such as gender and ethnicity, which have an appeal to audiences beyond the discipline boundaries of sociology, but often render sociological theories ambiguous. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the impact of so-called7 identity movements on sociological theory was certainly helpful, as it alleviated the neglect of culture in movement theories and established collective identity as central concept in both movement theory and social theory in general. Today, however, the preoccupation with identity movements is hampering theoretical development, since all too often the social structure as it is framed in identity fields is conflated with theoretical concepts social structure in sociological theory. Although these two phenomena are, of course, interrelated, they certainly do not constitute an isomorphism or even a monomorphism. At least since Marx we know that not all classes-in-themselves become immediately classes-for-themselves. Marx’ concept 7 The establishment of a collective identity is a central problem for a l l movements, particularly inn their incipient phases. Therefore it is misleading to speak of identity movements, when referring to women’s, queer, ecology and other movements commonly subsumed under this label.  New Age: A High Volume, Low Impact Identity 4 of false consciousness also taught us that, vice versa, classes-for-themselves that are not classes-in-themselves are equally conceivable. Leaving the identification of the social structure to social movements ignores these problems. Moreover, the uncritical importation of real-world categories into sociological theory is, of course, deeply conservative, since sociological theories that are constructed with societal categories lose their applicability, once the social phenomena that are depicted by these categories undergo changes (Adorno [1957] 1989: 95; Habermas [1963] 1989: 183f; Habermas [1964] 1989: 244, 263). The second weakness common to strategy and identity theories also likely stems from the blurring of the boundaries between movement research and movement practice. This weakness is a singular focus on collective action as a more or less rational cooperation of individuals. The experience of the 1960s’ and 1970s’ new movements led scholars to invert the irrationality bias of m a n y collective behavior theories. Now it seems as if crazes, riots, fads and panics would be antithetical to movements.8 The favorite empirical cases of contemporary movement theory, the new social movements, indeed do often recur to rational action. If movement theory had paid more attention to new religious movements and populist ethno-nationalist movements, which are also quite common in contemporary society, a different picture would have arisen, as these movements recur far more often to collective behavior. My analysis of New Age then aims at alleviation of problems of the dominant movement theories through an examination of a neglected empirical phenomenon. Fortunately, I did not have to develop the conjectures that might remedy above described weaknesses from scratch. Instead, I found, that many hypotheses from the mass society paradigm (Arendt 1951: chapter 11; Kornhauser [1959] 1960; Lederer [1940] 1967), which movement theorists today usually reject in passing, contains not only an elaborate theory on the above weaknesses, but also fits the empirical case of New Age reasonably well. Indeed, if one ignores mass society’s theses on the political sphere, it at times reads like an introduction into the ideological and structural 8 Of course, the dynamics of irrational behavior can also (rationally) be appropriated by the state. Take the following example from Nazi-Germany: “The intermingling of collective behavior and officially organized action, of cloaking the machine- organized terrorism by alleging that irresponsible mob activities, motivated by “righteous indignation,” is the cause - is revealed in Göbbel’s contradictory formula: ‘the organized spontaneity of the people.’” (Gerth & Mills 1954: 434).  New Age: A High Volume, Low Impact Identity 5 aspects of New Age. Take Hannah Arendt’s deft characterization of the recruitment pool for totalitarian movements: “[T]hey recruited their members from the mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention.” (Arendt 1951: 305)9 Granted that this assessment gives only an incomplete picture Nazi’s recruitment pool, it fairly well characterizes New Age’s clientele. New Agers usually do lack substantial network ties, they do not share a common goal, they command over little cultural capital (they are “too stupid”), and they do not engage in collective action in the strict sense (they are “apathetic”). Of course, that does not mean that New Age feeds automatically into fascist ideologies (Hexham 1999), as some antagonists suggest (e.g., Ditfurth 1996; Bellmund & Siniveer 1997).10 In fact, one of the most salient features of fascism is its exclusionary xenophobia, while New Age is decidedly universalistic.11 However, the structural elements identified in mass society theory apply to New Age and might thus usefully amend political process and identity theories. The thesis is structured as follows. In Chapter 2 the existing theoretical approaches to social and religious movements are discussed. The theoretical model for the development of New Age that has been elaborated within this framework is presented in chapter 3. The data that shall support this model will be presented in chapter 4. Chapters five through eight then will match these data with theoretical model. Chapter 5 is mainly descriptive and will introduce the reader into literary, ideological and social aspects of New Age. Chapter 6 will discuss discourses in New Age’s identity field. Chapter 7 will rely more on resource mobilization theory and tie New Age identity to its organizational form. Finally, chapter 8 will discuss recruitment processes to New Age and thereby analyze the structural position of the movement. To round up the discussion, the major findings will be reiterated in the 9 Masses in this respect are disconnected persons, which lack a “common interest” (ibid.). 10 Lederer ([1940] 1967: 217ff) rightfully acknowledges that astrology, which today has been partly incorporated in New Age, does n o t follow the logic of crowd processes prominent in the development of German nazism and Italian fascism, where according to mass society theory individuals in amorphous crowds act, or more precisely behave, without considerable reflection on the direction of their action. Instead, astrology is based on reflective action, even if the thinking in astrology differs sharply from the rationalism of modern science. 11 To be sure, German nazism just like New Age does contain elements of pagan mythologies, but so do those branches of the women’s movement, which incorporate Goddess mythologies.  New Age: A High Volume, Low Impact Identity 6 conclusion and implications of the findings for two theoretical fields, citizenship and social movement theory, will be discussed. A First Glimpse at New Age Let me briefly summarize practices and beliefs of New Agers. This is a complicated endeavor because New Age is a very incoherent phenomenon which would escape any precise definitional attempts. Matters are aggravated by the fact that many movement participants have distanced themselves from the New Age label but continue to carry out the practices commonly subsumed under the New Age (Lewis & Melton 1992: x; Hexham 1999). In addition, external and internal conceptions of New Age differ markedly. With these problems in mind we can identify New Age as encompassing − the belief in an evolutionary cultural transformation of society; − a preference for eclecticism; − an emphasis on individualism; − the adaptation of Eastern religious beliefs such as religious monism; − an emphasis on spirituality and mysticism; − attempts to achieve harmony with nature; − a belief in supernatural phenomena and extraterrestrial life; − a reliance on alternative health practices. Channeling, astrology, numerology, meditation, neo-paganism, devotion to angels, aromatherapy, faith healing, herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage therapies, dietary regimes, hypnosis, anthroposophy/theosophy, Sufism are examples for New Age beliefs and practices. These examples neither jointly define New Age, nor does the exercise of any of these practices suffice to characterize a person or organization as New Age. But on the whole most New Agers do embrace several of these practices and beliefs. Some readers might object that these circumscription of New Age is very ambiguous. They are right. The reason for this ambiguity is that New Age constitutes an empirical event, not a sociological concept. The Societal Context The context for New Age is modern society. which entails some important properties for present purposes. First, modern society is a highly differentiated system, which has imperiled