The (Hebrew, about 20 min.) lecture took place at the 8th Israeli Conference for the Study of Contemporary Spiritualities’ plenum, at the University of Haifa (December 2015). The lecture presented the model of “the Ideational Network”, that was Ruah-Midbar’s doctoral dissertation’s fruit (see link below). Ruah-Midbar Shapiro was also the co-chair of this conference, and actually the initiator and founder of the series of ICSCS. (Click here for a link to all the conferences in the series).
This lecture opened the final session of the conference, that was on “Spirituality Now – Israel 2016: Conceptualizations, Major Trends, and Central Issues”. The session’s chair was Boaz Huss.
The recorded lecture
The following video contains the chair’s opening words, followed by the lecture on the Ideational Network.
(Please note that till 5:46 min., the audio of the video is problematic, and it gets better afterwards.)
The whole session is in Hebrew.
Abstract
The New Age is an elusive research subject, which boarders and characteristics are disputable. Even spiritual practitioners in the field are renouncing the “New Age” label, and the scholars are debating in the attribution of phenomena to this title, and try to deal with immanent contradictions in the ideational world of New Age.
Is there one idea, value, or belief of the New Age, that is shared by all the phenomena ascribed to it? What is it? Is there a list of values, and is it compelling? What is the connection between the list’s ingredients? Is this phenomenon or that one belong to the New age or not? Attempts to answer these questions yielded entirely different conclusions by different scholars.
The lecture shall present a solution to the various methodological questions of comrehension of this phenomena which is complex, full of contraditions and of with vague boarders, known as New Age, via the model of the “Ideational Network”.
We shall also address the uses and adventages of drawing inspiration from the Network Sceince for the comprehension of the New Age culture.
Language
Hebrew
Academic/Non-Academic
Academic
Publisher/Source
The Israeli Conference for the Study of Contemporary Spiritualities
University of Haifa
Bibliographical citation
Ruah-Midbar, Marianna, “Thinking of the New Age as an ‘Ideational Network’”, a lecture at the Israeli Conference for the Study of Contemporary Spiritualities, University of Haifa, December 31st, 2015. [Hebrew]
