While calls for sobriety and adoption of more respectful lifestyles are multiplying, this work offers an original approach: understanding the practices of voluntary renunciation as a spiritual experience, from the concept of asceticism.
What is the contemporary becoming of asceticism, characteristic of religious virtuosity (Weber, 1995) ? This is the initial question that animates the research of Isabelle Jonveaux, sociologist of religions at the Swiss Institute of Pastoral Sociology. This work stems from a double empirical observation: first, that of a decline in asceticism in a monastic environment (Jonveaux, 2018), then that of the growing development of bodily disciplines in secular society. Isabelle Jonveaux therefore undertakes an investigation into the “ security ascetic “Which corresponds to practices that involve” forms of abstinence and restrictions to achieve spiritual results “(P. 11)” which do not take place in an institutional religious framework or which do not come in direct response to a prescription from the institution (P. 41). In a secularized society, why are free individuals impose restrictions ? This work at the crossroads of the sociology of religions, the sociology of consumption and economic sociology relates more particularly to an ascetic practice: fasting, partial or total restriction of food, which can extend to new communication technologies, even to the car. Fasting can be practiced during group stays (fasting week and hiking, goum, Alphalaufetc.) or at home.
The book is based on an ethnographic survey by interviews and observations, mainly in Austria, but also in France during various fasting stays between 2012 and 2016 and more marginally on the award of a questionnaire with fasting, the observation of a Facebook group dealing with fasting and fasting manuals.
Secular asceticism as a spiritual experience
The first chapters of the work aims to define, circumscribe and locate the secular asceticism in reference to monastic asceticism. It appears that asceticism, a recurring element of monastic life reserved for virtuosos, is back both in the practices of monks and nuns as in the texts and speeches of the Catholic Church since the end of XXe century. More specifically, the practice of fasting has gradually disappeared from monastic life. In parallel, new forms of fasting intended for a secular audience are multiplying.
The monastic asceticism and the secular asceticism share several common points: the practices of secular asceticism studied are inscribed in the Christian tradition, rely on the practices of the monastic world and summon figures of reference of the monastic asceticism, such as the Christian ascetics of the desert. Fasting stays often take place in monasteries. Secular asceticism practices are nevertheless distinguished from monastic asceticism. First, the secular asceticism is a temporary and extraordinary practice, breaking with everyday life (particularly within the framework of fasting stays): it is a “ temporary exit from the world (P. 71). Then, the secular forms of fasting are part of a new relationship with the body embodied by offers oriented towards well-being: it is a question of feeling good in your body and in your mind using fasting. Finally, the community organization of stays ensures social control of the group and the submission of each to a disciplinary framework. Secular asceticism practices can also lead to more radical practices than monastic asceticism practices, as is the case for respirianism. The forms of secular asceticism therefore derive their legitimacy from the Catholic tradition and the practices of fasting of virtuosos, but they renew its meaning and intensity and draw from other spiritualities, such as Buddhism, and from extra-spiritual practices, for example repeated to medicine (as is the case for fasting Buchinger-Lützner, invented by a doctor).
Fasting is envisaged as a spiritual experience, the fruit of a personal approach lived subjectively by the individual: it is the practice of fasting that makes spirituality. It aims to purify the body and the mind, that is to say to free itself from the impurities of the body and the excesses of the consumer society to access oneself and regain interior clarity. This catharsis is associated by fasting for a new start. Secular asceticism practices are thus qualified “ of religious experience in itself (P. 161).
Who are the fasting ?
The following chapters draw up the social and spiritual profile of fasting. The practice of fasting is strongly gendered and the fasting is mainly women. In fasting stays, fasting is endowed with particularly high economic and cultural capital. Fasting at home are socially more diverse. It is interesting to emphasize that if fasting stays claim to aim for the erasure of social differences in the shared ascetic effort, the asceticism practiced during stays turns out to be a tool of distinction and asceticism can then be ostentatious. Fasters also share a marked interest in alternative food modes (vegetarian or vegan diets, consumption of products from organic food) and spirituality. They share ecological values centered around a return to nature. Finally, manyIts experienced a recent crisis or instability in their biographical trajectory. They and they testify to a high subjective religiosity level, especially in the context of stays. These “ Daily virtuosos »(P. 89) choose to practice fasting, staying or at home, for different reasons: reconnection to nature, search for purification, spiritual research, release of daily life, weight loss, curiosity, etc.
These motivations vary according to the religious profile of the fastingeusesigned, but allYour sharing common spiritual resources, such as a holistic approach to life. In this perspective, fasting targets the unification of three levels, body, soul and mind. Nevertheless, they and they are distinguished by their proximity to other spiritualities and their institutional belonging to a religion. Thus, their fasting practice is part of a “ Elastic spiritual framework (P. 146) marked by a Catholic potting soil.
Towards a satiety model ? Security asceticism and criticism of the consumer society
Secular asceticism practices are part of a critical context of the consumer society and its drifts. They are envisaged by fasting faster as a way to find a lost control, or even withdraw from the consumer society. The fastingeuses share strong reflexivity as to their consumption practices, especially food and recognize their triple responsibility in relation to oneself, to the human and natural environment. The asceticism is then envisaged as a social commitment and a form of protest, even an alternative form of life to the reverse of social, economic and environmental disturbances of current lifestyles.
Fasting is nevertheless a type of consumption which plans paradoxically in the consumer society and is the subject of market transactions (fasting stays, purification instruments, etc.). Fasting practices then aim to restore meaning to acts of purchase and consumption. Isabelle Jonveaux highlights the cogs of the fasting economy, which is based on the euphemization of its economic and commercial dimensions.
She concludes that the practices of secular asceticism would integrate into a counter-model in the consumer society: the model of satiety. This model, which promotes a positive and happy sobriety and is embodied in practices of voluntary sobriety such as fasting, currently seems to concern only certain specific social categories.
Conclusion
Body discipline, practice of renunciation, form of protest, spiritual experience, the secular asceticism brings together various practices at the interface between the religious sphere and the secular sphere, including fasting. There “ Ascetic recharging on the side of the Sociétière company (P. 209) is explained by spiritual motivations experienced at the individual level and critical social dimensions of the consumer society. The sociological analysis of the secular asceticism makes it possible to analyze two wider tendencies: first, the decline in the influence of institutional religion in our societies, which seems more marked in France than in Austria ; Then, the criticism of the consumer society which leads to the construction of alternative consumption modes, particularly in the current environmental and health context. Finally, the renewed attraction for secular asceticism practices seems above all the fact of individuals open to spiritualities and criticisms of the consumer society, which do not constitute a unified social group.
Isabelle Jonveaux offers a work rich by the plurality of the land and the methodological reflections on the involvement of the body of the investigator on the ground (chapter 1), even if it is not always easy to orient itself among the different types of fasting practices and the different maintenance extracts (which do not always specify the socio-demographic characteristics of the surveyed and the type of stay in which they or they participated). Perhaps it would have been relevant to distinguish the analysis of fasting and fasting stays, which do not follow the same logics and do not concern the same profiles of fasting. Finally, the results drawn from the answers to the questionnaire, which received a very limited number of responses (65 on the Austrian field and 83 on the French field) oblige prudence.
Taking as a starting point the asceticism in monasteries, one also wonders to what extent the analysis draws a panorama of all the practices of fasting, including in other religions, even outside of religious beliefs, such as therapeutic fasting. This leads in particular to questioning the relationships between fasting, holistic practices and conventional and alternative medicines, even sectarian movements, which are underdeveloped. Finally, the highlighting of the moral dimension of fasting and religious interpretations does not really allow to go beyond an individualizing framing of the secular asceticism, thus masking the wider dynamics of politicization and depoliticization of modes of consumption.