The Brahma Kumaris as a ‘Reflexive Tradition’: Responding to Late Modernity

The aim of this book is to examine the status of tradition in the contemporary world, through a critical engagement with the recent social theory of Anthony Giddens on the emergence of a ‘post-traditional society’ using as a case-study, the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organisation, a millenarian South Asian New Religious Movement.  It studies the ways in which forms of tradition not only persist but also flourish in the contemporary world, and the manner in which they are drawn on and (re) created by individuals in their ongoing construction of self-identity.  The book traces the relationship between tradition and modernity within social theory from the founding fathers of the discipline to a range of contemporary analyses; discusses the detraditionalisation thesis in relation to contemporary religiosity through an examination of the New Age Movement; focuses on the emergence and historical development of both the University and its theodicy; and examines the University’s membership and how this world-ambivalence is manifested amongst those who attend the University’s events.  It concludes by relating the various strands of the author’s discussion of the Brahma Kumaris back to the detraditionalisation thesis.