From jewellery to meditation pillows to tourist retreats, religious traditions – especially those of the East – are being commodified as never before. Imitated and rebranded as ‘New Age’ or ‘spiritual’, they are marketed to secular Westerners as an answer to suffering in the modern world, the ‘mystical’ and ‘exotic’ East promising a path to enlightenment and inner peace.
In Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi, Sophia Rose Arjana examines the appropriation and sale of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam in the West today, the role of mysticism and Orientalism in the religious marketplace, and how the commodification of religion impacts people’s lives.
- ISBN10 178607771X
- ISBN13 9781786077714
- Publish Date 6 August 2020 (first published 9 June 2020)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Oneworld Publications
- Format Paperback
- Pages 320
- Language English