You are currently viewing Research Article: “Everything Starts Within” – New Age Values, Images, and Language in Israeli Mainstream Advertisements

The article analyses the uses of New Age elements in Major commercial advertisements in Israel.
For academic lectures of this research project, see links below.

Abstract

This article focuses on the appropriation of New Age values, images, and language by different sectors of the mainstream in a Western society––in Israel. The findings support earlier research about the shift in values in the mainstream of Western societies. Specifically, this is a shift towards the admiration of nature, Far Eastern lore, a search for a ‘balanced’ way of life, and so on, in accordance with New Age values. This article analyzes how, and for what purpose, mainstream advertisements appropriate New Age elements. The analysis of about 100 advertisements from the last decade leads to the conclusion that all mainstream sectors, including relatively conservative ones (such as academic institutions), borrow elements from New Age, but differ in the intensity and form of appropriation: some are interested in simply attracting attention, while others directly appropriate New Age values. This article discusses the differentiation between the receptivity of specific sectors to New Age and explores possible motivations for the use of New Age elements, such as the more conservative sectors’ use of esoteric elements of New Age.

Authors

Marianna Ruah-Midbar
Nurit Zaidman

Links

For the article’s page at the journal’s site – click here.

year

2013

Language

English

Academic/Non-academic

Academic item

Publisher/Source

Journal of Contemporary Religion

JCR one of the most foremost journals in the world in the field of religious studies and has been published since 1996. In 2014, SJR ranked it 4th among about 450 journals in the field of religions, and it is of course the most important journal in the field of contemporary religion.

SJR Ranking – from 1999 to 2017, consecutively, Q1 in the Religious Studies category almost every year. Similarly, in those years it ranked Q1 in the philosophy category, as well as in the Cultural Studies category.

Bibliographical citation

Ruah-Midbar, Marianna, and Nurit Zaidman, “’Everything Starts Within’ – New Age Values, Images, and Language in Israeli Mainstream Advertisements”, in Journal of Contemporary Religion 28.3 (2013): 421-436.

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