ARTICLE The New Agents Personal transfiguration and radical privatization in New Age self-help

Abstract. The New Age is a broad milieu which allows participants to undertake a range of activities in pursuit of self-improvement. Often characterized as a form of religious consumerism in the popular media, it does not easily fit into received church-sect models of the sociology of religion. This article argues that the movement’s market-type organizational logic, in which individuals typically choose from a range of belief options rather than commit to a central doctrine, is consonant with the privatist concerns of personal authority and self-care found in its discourse. However, at the same time, the New Age does not reduce to some simple acquisitive consumerism. It is better understood as offering solutions to the problem of personal agency in a post-traditional society which obliges individuals to assume the burden of plotting their own destinies. Key words consumerism countercultures new social movements religion spirituality DURING A RECENT PERUSAL OF THE FREE POSTCARD STAND at my local cinema, I was struck by the number of cards that were not straightforward advertisements for familiar consumer products: so many aspects of social life are now at least partly conveyed through the techniques of ‘promotional culture’. One card advertised the Australian Government’s National Reconciliation Week, another its Consumer Affairs Division. Those repre-senting charities included one for a community development organizatio