New spirituality quest in the late modern world: A qualitative study on the worlds of emotion and meaning of individuals participating in spiritual activities and groups

In the late modern world, neoliberal ideology infiltrates the bodies and emotions of individuals and controls and supervises them through dispositive discourses and structures. The basic ethos of this world is established with discourse structures such as 'be happy', 'experience pleasure', 'stay fit', 'return to yourself', 'be successful', 'recognise no boundaries', and these structures are manifested in the individual's body and world of meaning and shape his/her lifestyle. In order to overcome the tension created by these ethos, the individual seeks happiness and is driven to endless endeavour. This situation appears in the literature as 'the rise of Homo Sentimentalis'. By controlling emotions, power imposes which emotions the individual should avoid or which emotions he/she should adopt. Individuals resort to various strategies and consumption practices in order to manage their emotions and achieve ideal emotions. One of these is the spiritual activities that have been on the rise in recent years and are included in the 'New Age Movements'. How these new efforts, which are also defined as the popularised, market-articulated and individualised spirituality pursuits of the late modern period, play a role in making sense of individuals' experiences in daily life and shaping their emotions and bodies are among the issues that need to be researched with a sociological approach. In this context, this study aims to address the way individuals are involved in activities called 'alternative healing', 'holistic spirituality' or 'spiritual'. Within the scope of this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 individuals who participated in spiritual support networks and selected by purposeful sampling method. The interviews were categorised, discussed and interpreted in line with certain themes and sub-codes.