In a critical reinterpretation of the idea of the 'disenchantment of nature', this provocative and timely book argues that contemporary ideas and practices concerning nature and technology remain closely bound up with religious ways of thinking and acting. Using examples from North America, Europe and elsewhere, many derived from original research, it reinterprets a range of 'secular' phenomena in terms of their conditioning by a complex series of transformations of the sacred in Western history. The contemporary practices of environmental politics, technological risk behaviour, alternative...

In a critical reinterpretation of the idea of the 'disenchantment of nature', this provocative and timely book argues that contemporary ideas and practices concerning nature and technology remain closely bound up with religious ways of thinking and acting. Using examples from North America, Europe and elsewhere, many derived from original research, it reinterprets a range of 'secular' phenomena in terms of their conditioning by a complex series of transformations of the sacred in Western history. The contemporary practices of environmental politics, technological risk behaviour, alternative...

This insightful and provocative journey through spiritual landscapes explores the ways in which spiritualities of life have been experienced and understood in Western society, and argues that today's myriad forms of holistic spirituality are helping us to find balance in face of the stifling demands of twenty-first century living.

• An enlightening book which explores the ways in which spirituality has been experienced and valued in Western society
  
• Traces the development of modern spirituality, from the origins of Romanticism in the eighteenth...