Expelling the avatar

Controversies, Certification and Scientific Paradigm in the Emerging Field of Mindfulness (France, United States)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29340/en.v4n7.164

Keywords:

mindfulness meditation, contemporary spirituality, scientific field, history of science, care

Abstract

The display of mindful meditation in the most minute spaces of social life has led in recent years to dissident voices within the very world it builds. In the face of a drift in the market considered harmful, the producers of this field dictate norms to tell mindful meditation apart from their avatars. This article explores the frontiers of the emerging field of mindfulness by analyzing the controversies running through it. The competition between scientific and religious logics does not resist the multiple positioning of actors that transit between one context and the other, in a strategy of accumulation of plural legitimacies. When contemplative sciences demand the epistemological renovation of research on mindful meditation, they question the scientific paradigm of “Western science” and defend the dialogue between experimental sciences and contemplative practices.

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Author Biography

  • Sara Le Menestrel, Centre national de la recherche scientifique

    Sara le menestrel She is a cultural anthropologist and researcher at the CNRS. Within the field of music anthropology, his research interests include the construction and negotiation of difference in Louisiana. In 2015 he published Negotiating Difference: Categories, Stereotypes and Identiations in French Louisiana Music (University of Mississippi). Between 2007 and 2012, he coordinated the nationally funded project “Musiques, danses et mondialisation: circulations, mutations, pouvoir”, which resulted in a team-written book, Des vies en musique. Parcours d'artistes, mobilités, transformations, to be published in 2020 in English by Routledge. Since 2005, he has expanded his research interests to the anthropology of the disaster in post-Katrina Louisiana and -Rita. Since 2015, he started an ethnography of mindfulness meditation focused on health care in France and the United States.

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Published

2021-03-23

How to Cite

Expelling the avatar: Controversies, Certification and Scientific Paradigm in the Emerging Field of Mindfulness (France, United States). (2021). Encartes, 4(7), 162-202. https://doi.org/10.29340/en.v4n7.164