"Sociology of Spirituality":Problems of Creation
The rapid expansion of the concept of “spirituality” in the West is the sign of changing religiousness in the context of socio-cultural changes. In the descriptions of religious consciousness and behaviour, the concepts of “religion” and “spirituality” are often opposed as objective “traditional spirituality” and subjective “post-traditional spirituality”. While the first (religion) is becoming less relevant and failed its “plausibility structure”, the second takes the character of the “spiritual revolution” or “spiritual turn” and transforms it into a strong trend in many countries of Europe and beyond. In the process of studying of the different types of spirituality, a new discipline is forming - “the sociology of spirituality” - as a multi-disciplined approach to the sociology of religion. This article focuses on some problems of this process, including the causes of the emergence of the concept of spirituality in the sociological context, points of commonality and points of departure in conceptualising religion and spirituality, and the possibilities for the development of a new discipline.