‘New Age’ revisited: By way of entry into restorative justice

Abstract

The present article pursues striking similarities between the discourse of philosophies and practices often categorised as ‘New Age’, and that of restorative justice. By bringing observations from data material produced in seemingly very different fields of research to a close encounter, a common discourse of transformation is tentatively explored, adding to contemporary works that warn against assuming ‘New Age’ as a sui generis movement or milieu. The article is an exercise in tracing connections across different fields of study, lending support to the claim that such tracing may contribute to the opening out of our topic in ways that have implications for what we can understand as constituting a social environment, for what we can understand as constituting context, for what we can understand as constituting ‘New Age’.

Keywords:

• New Age
• restorative justice
• discourse
• transformation
• individualism

Notes

 1. Mark Umbreit, on the homepage of the Centre for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking, University of Minnesota: http://rjp.umn.edu/resources/forgivenss_peacemaking_spirituality.html (accessed 28 August 2008).

 2. I used Norwegian Buddhist Centres as points of strategic intervention, talking to people who came there as part of a larger quest referred to as ‘seeking’, probing into their stories about what seeking entailed.

 3. This does not imply that the quote is representative of everything that is written about restorative justice. What I am claiming is that there is a common denominator in the language used.

 4. When using the concept ‘New Age’, the spiritual seekers that were my informants in general strongly and explicitly resented it, as to them it carried connotations of a light-shopping mentality they could not identify with. In some academic literature seeking is compared to picking and choosing in a candy store. The picking and choosing of candy can hardly be understood as being of vital importance: it is rather a luxury of light indulgence. However, the metaphor of the candy-store captures the way seeking entails extraction and annotation, and in this sense it is a very good metaphor. But there are aspects of seeking it does not capture well. True, there is a market out there, in which there is buying and selling (Kraft 2001). A brief look at the magazine ‘Alternativt Nettverk’ illustrates this point: courses being announced and artefacts of different kinds sold (Christensen 2005). But the fact that there is buying and selling must not be confused with people's motives for, or experience with, engaging in the activities in question (Eide 2008). There are ‘processes and activities in “New Age” shops that are not associated with its commodity context, but rather with the creation of sacred space’ (Zaidman 2007, 268).

 5. New Age has been pointed out as a pluralism consisting of for instance ‘meditation, the use of crystals, heeding channels, communing with nature, practicing spiritual healing, trying virtual reality equipment, taking celebratory-cum-inspirational holidays, participating in workshops, becoming involved with covens, camps, communes, austere spiritual paths, well organised new and not-so-new religious movements or simply obtaining the cultural provisions (literature, music and drafts) which have proliferated in recent times’ (Heelas 1999, 1), along with ‘beliefs, practices and ways of life’, exemplified by ‘esoteric or mystical Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Taoism’ along with ‘elements from “pagan” teachings including Celtic, Druidic, Mayan and Native American Indian’, as well as ‘Zen meditations, Wiccan rituals, enlightenment intensive seminars, management trainings, shamanic activities, wilderness events, spiritual therapies’ and other ‘forms of positive thinking’ (Heelas 1999, 1).

 6. A global social movement indeed; in addition to the Nordic countries we find restorative programmes in the rest of Europe, North America as well as Australasia (Richards 2005, 2007; Wahlin 2005). South Africa is often held up as a shining example of the potential of restorative justice, by way of the work of the Truth Commissions.

 7. This will also be the case even if the aspect of ‘voluntariness’ may be questioned, as choices nonetheless will have to be made by someone.

 8. The concept of the tacit dimension (Polanyi 1983) refers to the existence of embodied and non-verbal knowledge. And pain has been seen as stubbornly resisting symbolisation (Good and DelVecchio 1992). There are limits to what is being put into words, and there are limits to what can be put into words (Scarry 1985).

 9. It has also been questioned if reconciliation necessarily always is a good thing, and whether anger necessarily is a bad thing: anger may make people unite in demonstrations – give us back the night! Anger may fuel action, revolution and change. Reconciliation at the level of individuals may be understood as an act of preservation, as it may dampen the imperatives needed for bringing about change at other societal levels.

10. Mikaelson draws connections between an economy that is increasingly becoming ‘mysterious’ and ‘impenetrable’, and certain ‘cosmic speculations’. She says that the introduction of credit cards, etc. has contributed to an abstraction of economy: ‘Money is increasingly becoming an invisible stream of energy in the world, corresponding more and more with the New Age energy concept, and thus perhaps indirectly supporting a New Age vision of the universe’ (Mikaelson 2001, 108). Her argument is that when money is perceived as an energy flow of the universe, appearing as accessible in abundance, it is understood as something up to the individual to reach for. Social class and economic structures of societies are ignored in such a cosmology, she says.

11. I have not heard restorative justice practitioners use the word ‘holism’ much, but in their emphasis on the significance of ‘the community’ and ‘owners of the conflict’ as entailing more than ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’, I read an attempt at celebrating values reflected by way of the concept of holism.

12. I am assuming an eclectic approach, well aware that Foucault might have had some serious objections to the concept of an intransitive dimension. In general I defend an eclectic approach, as I believe whatever reality is, it can never be fully captured by our models of understanding. There will always be more to reality than what we may be able to grasp at any given moment. Any model has the potential of drawing attention to certain aspects of reality, as well as covering up others. Utilising different models is a way of assuming different points of entry and exit in our data material, the very approach Deleuze and Guattari recommend, in an acknowledgement of the complexities of the realities we study.

13. In the sense that experience is always directed towards something, a reaction to something, as something arising in a social context.