Paper short abstract:

I will discuss how angel services are produced in Finland and how the producers describe their work. As data, I use interviews with angel therapists. The transition to producers is related to a crisis. Entrepreneurship is seen as a part of a spiritual path and the strengthening of personal skills.

Paper long abstract:

In my presentation, I discuss how angel services are produced in the new spiritual field in Finland and how the providers of new spiritual services describe their work and acquire their customer base. The production of new spiritual services has been studied less than the use of services, so the producers of angel services are an inviting research target. The research material consists of six interviews with a woman practicing angel therapy. The provision of angel services in Finland covers the whole country.

The interviewees tell about the turning point of how they started to be interested in new spirituality. The transition to being a user and later a provider of spiritual services are related to a personal or professional life crisis. The interviewees studied a variety of spiritual services while searching for their path as service providers. They are seekers who effortlessly combine different traditions with their spirituality. Various certificates gave them the confidence to work in the profession and the opportunity to identify themselves as professionals of the new spirituality. Spirituality and entrepreneurship are not in conflict, as they interpret entrepreneurship as part of spiritual growth and strengthening personal skills.

Producing angel services is often combined with other work, and the interviewees represented different ways of providing angel services. Spiritual services have moved more and more online in the 2020s. Service providers produce stories about themselves and customers that tell about the functionality of the services. These stories are essential when creating a customer base and defining professionalism. Websites are integral tools for both obtaining a reputation and getting job opportunities. The transition to becoming an entrepreneur and giving up paid work can be interpreted as a resistance to neoliberalism's focus on work, the structures of working life, and alienation.

Paper short abstract:

I explore @muslimskkvindekamp’s use of Instagram to disseminate Islamic feminism. Based on digital content and interview material, I explain how they understand Islamic feminism and their digital platform as a counterpublic. I contribute to broader understandings of Muslim feminism in Scandinavia.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the ways in which a Copenhagen-based Instagram account @muslimskkvindekamp (“Muslim women’s struggle”) employ Instagram to disseminate Islamic feminism in Danish. I base the paper on my ongoing analysis of the Instagram content from the account collected between July and December 2022 as well as two semi-structured interviews with two of the account owners in May 2022. The findings are provisional, and the paper does not offer a comprehensive understanding of the research topics. It does, however, highlight some aspects of feminism and Islam in Scandinavia. On one hand, I explore the various conceptualizations of feminism in Islam and how @muslimskkvindekamp understand the terms. On the other hand, I am interested in digital spaces as counterpublics and how they contribute to change in religion and feminism. The account, for instance, talk against both Orientalist narratives and conservative and androcentric narratives about Islam and Muslims. Ultimately, it serves as base for knowledge and information about Islamic feminism and biographies of central figures who are engaged with Islamic feminism. Thus, the paper investigates the relationship between Islam and feminism by looking at the use of Instagram to talk about and discuss feminism in Islam. By concentrating on an account based in Denmark, the paper brings forward broader understandings of Islam and feminism in Scandinavia.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the entanglement between feminism, eugenics, and spiritualism in the late 19th century and early 20th century by focusing particularly on spiritualist and political activist Victoria C. Woodhull (1838-1927), and spiritualist and theosophist Lady Caithness (1830-1895).

Paper long abstract:

Quite some research has been devoted to the entanglement between feminism, eugenics, and spiritualism in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Not enough attention however has been devoted in this context to Victoria C. Woodhull (1838-1927). A protagonist of first-wave feminism in North America, Woodhull is remembered today among other things for publishing the first English edition of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in 1871 and for being the first woman candidate to US Presidency in 1872. But Woodhull was also deeply involved in spiritualism, to the point of being elected President of the American Association of Spiritualists. In the mid-1870s, she began to propagate ideas about eugenics and feminism couched in a rhetoric based on Biblical exegesis. For this purpose, she ventured in lecture tours and produced numerous pamphlets. Her ideas were later taken up by spiritualist and theosophist Maria Mariátegui, a.k.a. Lady Caithness (1830-1895), who was a close friend of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) and Anna Kingsford (1846-1888). Caithness is a neglected but important figure in the history of the early Theosophical Society and her connection to the ideas of Woodhull had been ignored so far. There are several reasons why this underground transmission of ideas is important. First of all, it shows how some aspects of the relationship between feminism, eugenics, and spiritualism still have to be written and understood. Secondly, it shows how a specifically religious rhetoric based on Biblical exegesis could serve the purposes of this relationship. Finally, we find here an important, if heretofore hidden, source of modern spiritual technologies applied to the body, and more particularly to the female body. Eugenics, understood as a form of bodily technology, played an important, ambiguous part in this story.

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on Castaneda's concept of “power” and its relation to “energy”, the core doctrinal trait of alternative spirituality. The phenomenon sheds light both on the role of the image of technology and the re-invention of indigenous religions in contemporary spirituality.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of “energy” is often cited as the most important doctrinal trait of the so-called New Age Spirituality. Its influence vastly exceeds the confines of spirituality, spilling into the popular culture and public discourse. The paper focuses on its specific rendering in the writings of Carlos Castaneda: his concepts such as “luminous eggs”, “power” and “Eagle” shed interesting light on some of the core questions that surround the concept of “energy” as a mirror of the process of sacralization of technology in our society. At the same time, the paper shows how the concept of “energy” permeates both academic and non-academic understanding of the precolonial religions of the Americas, thus reshaping our interpretation of indigenous cultures to fit the spiritual needs of the contemporary global West