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‘Spiritual’ witchcraft and magic 2.0 as weapons of resistance: The emergence of a new movement?

Lionel OBADIA https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9682-6461 [email protected]View all authors and affiliations

Volume 70, Issue 4

https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231217194

Abstract
References
Biographies

Abstract

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the landscape of religions and the dynamics of beliefs are reshaped by several movements. On one side, a ‘return of magic’ in contemporary societies and the rise of a modern witchcraft, and in parallel, and on another side, the rise and expansion of forms of ‘spirituality’. These two movements, both featuring in a specific manner the new face of the sacred, are often considered isolated from each other by social sciences and humanities, and religious studies, they, however, significantly crossover. As a result, modern witchcraft is turning more ‘spiritual’, whereas spirituality is – to a certain extent – becoming more ‘witchy’. With reference to the empirical examples of the emerging movements Magic for resistance and Witches 2.0, this article aims at demonstrating that the issue of politics and empowerment facilitate the cross-fertilization of the two movements in the context of high digitization.

Résumé

Aux tournants des 20^e et 21^e siècles, le paysage des religions et les dynamiques des croyances sont traversés par plusieurs mouvements: celui d’un « retour de la magie » et d’une montée en force d’une sorcellerie moderne, en parallèle d’une extension des formes de la « spiritualité ». Si les deux mouvements qui illustrent chacun à sa manière la trajectoire du sacré en modernité, sont le plus souvent traités de manière isolée l’un de l’autre par les sciences humaines et sociales et les sciences religieuses, il se trouve que des entrecroisements significatifs s’opèrent entre les deux mouvements ce qui rend la sorcellerie moderne plus « spirituelle » et la spiritualité – jusqu’à un certain point–plus « sorcière ». C’est en particulier à travers la question du politique et de l’empowerment que les deux mouvements se fécondent, ce que montre cet article en se basant sur des exemples des mouvances émergentes des sorcières 2.0 et du mouvement Magic for resistance en contexte de digitalisation avancée

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Biographies

Lionel OBADIA, PhD in sociology (1997), is professor in Anthropology at the university of Lyon 2, France, since 2004. After a PhD on Buddhism in the West, he specialized in anthropology of religion and spirituality, Asian religions, and Globalization. He has conducted fieldworks in France, Europe (on Buddhism), Nepal (on Buddhism and Shamanism), and South India (in the utopian city of Auroville). He is now conducting researches on magic, witchcraft, and ‘supernatural’ beliefs in the context of the digital revolution. He conducts anthropological researches on AI, robots, and connected technologies. He has published 10 books, edited 10 others, and almost 20 journal special issues. He has written more than 200 papers (journal articles and book chapters). Last publications: ‘Nouveaux répertoires de spiritualité à l’épreuve des terrains’ (as editor, Ethnologie Française, 2023/1 - 53) and La spiritualité (Paris, La découverte, 2023).

Address: LARHRA UMR 5190, CNRS, University of Lyon, France; ISIR UMR 7555 – CNRS, Sorbonne University, France.

Email: [email protected]

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