The East Asian cultural sphere has figured prominently in recent collections of research on new religious movements (e.g. Pokorny and Winter 2018, Clart, Ownby and Wang 2020), Theosophy (e.g. Rudbog and Sand 2020, Krämer and Strube 2020) and global therapeutic cultures (e.g. Nehring et al. 2020, Harrington 2008), while it continues to attract the attention of scholars working on civil society (e.g. Read and Pekkanen 2009) and self-help movements (e.g. Cliff et al. 2017, Palmer 2007).

But, although we are often aware of the complex entanglements between these seemingly separate areas of interest, we seldom have the opportunity to discuss such entanglements in and beyond East Asia.

At the same time, in the last twenty years, significant scholarship has been published in East Asia on this topic (recent books include Yoshinaga et al. 2019, Ichiyanagi 2020, Imura and Hamano 2021 in Japan, Zheng 2018, Zhang 2020 in China and Cheon Myeong-soo 2009, Park Seung-gil et al. 2019 in South Korea). 

This conference aims to offer such a chance by inviting academic contributions to reflect on the intertwined relationship between spirituality, healthcare and social movements in East Asia from a trans-national/local/cultural perspective. As a time of unprecedented changes and accelerated global interactions, our focus lies on the period between the nineteenth to the twentieth-first centuries.

We understand that East Asia is not a monolithic or readily-identifiable entity, but rather a historical construction that has been constantly reshaped and re-invoked for multiple reasons and by a number of actors, many of whom have come from outside the political frontiers of China, Japan and Korea.

Moreover, whereas an ‘East Asian-centred’ approach might be initially helpful to counterbalance ‘Euro-american-centred’ perspectives still prevalent in academic settings, East Asia – however defined – has flourished in a changing, closely interconnected world.

The emergence of new religious movements like Theosophy, Falungong and Taireido, or the popularisation of acupuncture, reiki and hypnosis worldwide, for instance, challenge reductionist binary views of East/West, tradition/modernity, science/religion.

Likewise, the recent dissemination of New Age practices across East Asia or the ongoing study of Buddhist meditation by American and European psychiatrists seem to reflect broader concerns that, for the past two centuries or so, have ignored national and cultural borders – and whose wider social implications are more visible than ever.

Simply put, a transnational or connected perspective (Subrahmanyam 1997) on spirituality and healthcare has much to contribute to a more thorough understanding of East Asia and the world as we know it today.