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Network spirituality: The Schumacher-

resurgence-Kumar nexus
Dominic Corrywright
Published online: 02 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Dominic Corrywright (2004) Network spirituality: The Schumacher-
resurgence-Kumar nexus, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 19:3, 311-327, DOI:
10.1080/1353790042000266336

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 Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2004
pp. 311–327

Network Spirituality: The

Schumacher–Resurgence–Kumar Nexus

DOMINIC CORRYWRIGHT
DOMINIC CORRYWRIGHTOxford Brookes UniversityWestminster Institute of EducationHarcourt HillOxfordOX2 9ATUK

ABSTRACT Network models have achieved wide and varied currency in contemporary
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descriptions of Alternative spiritualities. However, in general, the ascription of a

network structure and functionality among alternative religious groups and practices
has not been followed with a rigorous examination of how the network is constituted in
the field. This paper proposes a web model as the most appropriate taxonomical structure
for Alternative spiritualities. The web model is applied to a detailed investigation of three
linked aspects of the phenomena of alternative thought and spirituality: Schumacher
College, the periodical Resurgence, and Satish Kumar. All are based in the UK and
have a global influence on discussions about, in the words of Kumar, ‘soil, soul and
society’. The purpose of this paper has three elements. Firstly, to provide a description
of an aspect of Alternative spirituality that has so far not been the subject of academic
enquiry, using phenomenological, historical, and ethnographic research methods.
Secondly, to outline an appropriate model of this aspect of spirituality that is accurate,
of use in this specific context, and of utility in other contexts. Thirdly, to make an
objective ‘performance’ of the model on three different categories of subject—a
geographically located organisation, a periodical, and an individual.

CARE OF THE NEW CARPETS

Welcome to Schumacher College. All the bedrooms have just been
fitted (at great expense!) with new carpets which are 80% natural fibres.
Hopefully these should last a very long time. Obviously, please be
extremely careful with coffee, candles and muddy footwear. But if you
do have an accident please get help right away… In general, if you spill
a drink, flood the spill with water and use your towel to mop it up.
Then get help—we won’t bite. (Welcome notes in rooms of
accommodation blocks, Schumacher College, 2002)

Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs

of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and
the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search
of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. (Geertz, 1973: 5)

Introduction: Map and Method in the Study of Alternative Spirituality

The purpose of this paper is to describe a specific facet of Alternative spirituality,
which is developing in the UK. One aspect of this approach is simply a matter

ISSN 1353–7903 print/ISSN 1469-9419 on-line/04/030311-17 © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1353790042000266336
 312 D. Corrywright

of describing the factual details of place, people, and ideas. The other core aspect
will provide the bare bones of a typology or structure by which a novel
development of religious expression can be described. This is straightforward
contemporary phenomenology in the study of religions—description and
taxonomy. However, there is an element in the research, which feeds this paper
that has required a level of engagement beyond observation or even participant
observation. In some ways, it is a return to the modernist phenomenology of
Joachim Wach, which examines and defines and furthermore seeks that intuitive
understanding called verstehen (Wach, 1999 [1935]). It must be recognised that
such essentialist understanding is neither necessary for the scholar nor for a
scholarly audience. Indeed, many contemporary scholars claim such intuitive
knowledge is not available and its pursuit is anachronistic. Just as Kant defined
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the boundaries of human critical knowledge, which excluded direct knowledge

of the divine, post-structuralist critiques have excluded the possibility of
intuition that is anything other than projected interpretation. Yet, I maintain,
verstehen is a meta-category of understanding that is especially appropriate to a
study that looks at the ephemeral, numinous, and in many ways ineffable area
of spirituality. It is also appropriate in the field. In fieldwork, the researcher
harvests information and details with refined critical attention. However, if the
mass of observed events and interactions remains an undifferentiated pile of
journal entries and freebie flyers that result in, as Clifford Geertz (1973: 16)
phrases it, ‘Malinowski-size monographs’, the structures of meaning of those
observed are lost in the detail. The distinguishing feature between merely
descriptive analysis and analysis that ends with verstehen is that the map of the
observed phenomena which emerges from the latter more accurately represents
the systems of values and processes of engagement of the observed community.
This understanding includes recognising the network of values that underpin
‘care of the carpets’ (see above). The resulting monograph should then have
meanings, maps, and models, which are recognisable to both insiders and
outsiders.
When Jonathan Z. Smith (1978) reminded us that ‘map is not the territory’, it
was a timely remonstrance that externally applied models are not synonymous
with the categories of thought, belief, and experience of those scholars choose to
study. However, the objective distance between a flat and two-dimensional map
and the territory it describes can be ameliorated by the concept practices of
parallel experience (participant observation) and intuitive comprehension. A
useful example of this methodological leap between observer and observed,
insider and outsider, emerged during my research at Schumacher College
(September 2002). The author and film maker Roger Deakin was leading a
three-week course organised by the College, called ‘Everyday Magic’. An
important element of the course related to course participants understanding his
recent book Waterlog (Deakin, 1999), in which he made a journey (inspired by
John Cheever’s short story ‘The Swimmer’) through Britain’s wild waterways. In
Tarka country, with multiple waterways running off Dartmoor, Deakin made
use of the object lesson of a very cold late October swim in the river Dart.
Scholars cannot always participate in such a visceral manner. One does not need
to leap into every lake in order to make a map of them. Yet, in the growing
studies on Alternative spirituality I contend that many descriptions of the
phenomena are so eviscerated by the limitations of a predominantly social
 Alternative Spirituality Networks 313

scientific descriptive paradigm that the reassertion of embodied research which

includes the ‘emotional intelligence’ (Goleman, 1995) and ‘spiritual intelligence’
(Zohar & Marshall, 2000) of intuitive understanding is required. In poetry and
painting (for example, in the arts) it is accepted, and perhaps expected, that
expression go beyond descriptive facticity. The study of religions might also be
expected to go further, indeed beyond Gavin Flood’s dialogic hermeneutic of
signs (Flood, 1999),1 to a mode of representation that is accurate in its ability to
draw maps recognisable and of utility to both insiders and outsiders. Such, at
least, is the project I set myself in describing the network spirituality emerging
in contemporary culture.
A further preliminary point is required before beginning the investigation of
Schumacher College, Resurgence, and Satish Kumar as nexus in the web of
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Alternative spiritualities. The term ‘Alternative spirituality’ is gaining increasing

currency as acceptable nomenclature for a group of religious practices and
perspectives distinct from traditional ‘world’ religions (Sutcliffe & Bowman,
2000). It is increasingly superseding the term ‘New Age’, which is a label
explicitly rejected by many to whom it has been applied. The notion of
Alternative spirituality begs too many questions to discuss at length here. I will
simply offer a broad and contextual definition to act as a rubric for further use
of the term in this paper:
Alternative spirituality is about personal engagement with the sacred in
daily life and the relationship between human spiritual experience,
nature, world and cosmos. It is based on the belief that the material
world is infused with spiritual energy and human experience is
necessarily spiritual. It is a spirituality that requires no intermediaries
doctrinal or human, although practitioners may find inspiration from
any of the world’s religious and philosophical systems, institutions and
teachers. However, the only true agency of knowledge is direct
personal experience.
It is perhaps not too pedantic to add the rider that the term ‘spirituality’
functions as an umbrella term covering a diverse set of beliefs, practices, and
traditions, just as the word ‘religion’ does.
The purpose of this paper has three elements:
Firstly, to provide a description of an aspect of Alternative spirituality that has
so far not been the subject of academic enquiry, using phenomenological,
historical, and ethnographic research methods.
Secondly, to outline an appropriate model of this aspect of spirituality, which
is accurate and of use in this specific context and which can be of utility in other
contexts.
Thirdly, to make an objective ‘performance’ of the model on three different
categories of subject—a geographically located organisation, a periodical, and an
individual.

Bare Bones Model of the Web

The model and mode of representation I wish to present as most appropriate to
describe the multiform emergent Alternative spiritualities is based on the image
of a web. I have expounded upon this theory and applied the model at length
 314 D. Corrywright

elsewhere (Corrywright, 2001a; 2001b). It is, on the one hand, a model of human
interaction that emerges from network theory and the functions of human
groupings that developed out of late twentieth-century examinations of
networks (Gerlach & Hine, 1970; Castells, 1996; Taylor, 2001). It is, on the other
hand, a model informed by biological, philosophical, and consciousness theories
adopted and developed by scholars interested in holistic and spiritual
paradigms—the very theories and people influential (and in some cases directly
involved) in the nodes which are the subject of this paper (Laszlo, 1972; Wilber,
1982; Capra, 1996). Indeed, it is worth remarking upon the common intellectual
Zeitgeist that provided the impetus for such apparently disparate studies as
Gerlach and Hine’s investigation into the Black power movement of the 1960s
and 1970s, which led to their concept of the ‘segmented polycentric integrated
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network’ or SPIN (Gerlach & Hine, 1970: 34–37) and Ervin Laszlo’s (1972)
developments of Ludwig Bertalanffy’s biological systems theory, both of which
theorised network models. Moreover, behind both these streams of
representation lies an archetypal structure of human thought evident in many
religious traditions, which recognises, projects, and reflects upon the world, a
web of interdependence. Examples of this interdependent world include the
Buddhist concept of co-dependent origination, paticca-samuppada, the Hua-Yen
holographic world of the Avatamsaka sutra, or ‘Indra’s many jewelled net’, the
Hindu conception of so hum (‘you are therefore I am’); while for many
contemporary Sioux, the words of Chief Seattle on ‘the web of life’ are an
authentic expression of their religion’s view of an interconnected world (see, for
example, McGaa, 1990). The web model for Alternative spiritualities that I am
proposing draws on all these elements.
In The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra (1996) describes the features of interaction and
interdependence in living systems:
The view of living systems as networks provides a novel perspective on
the so-called ‘hierarchies’ of nature. Since living systems at all levels are
networks, we must visualise the web of life as living systems
(networks) interacting in network fashion with other systems
(networks). For example, we can picture an ecosystem schematically as
a network with a few nodes. Each node represents an organism, which
means that each node, when magnified, appears itself as a network.
Each node in the new network may represent an organ, which in turn
will appear as a network when magnified and so on.
In other words, the web of life consists of networks within networks. At
each scale, under close scrutiny, the nodes of the network reveal
themselves as smaller networks. We tend to arrange these systems, all
nesting within larger systems, in a hierarchical scheme by placing the
larger systems above the smaller in pyramid fashion. But this is a
human projection. In nature, there is no ‘above’, nor ‘below’, and there
are no hierarchies. There are only networks nesting within other
networks. (Capra, 1996: 35)
Perhaps Capra should go further, because even the creation of networks is
anthropocentric, part of a human construction which, from a postmodern
perspective, can be conceived as ‘at best no more than a temporarily useful
fiction masking chaos’ (Tarnas, 1991: 401). Nevertheless, the model of the web is
 Alternative Spirituality Networks 315

a means of organising the chaos of overlapping institutions and practices that

are the networks of Alternative spiritualities. I have used the idea of webs as a
framework, in which the threads are created by organisations and individuals’
activities and beliefs, to organise my description of Alternative spiritualities. As
a visual image one can imagine threads of greater or lesser thickness and
strength to represent levels of significance between the geographical locus, the
organisation or the practitioner, and its or their many connections. The web
model is organic in the sense that it reflects the mobility—physical, theoretical,
and historical—of places, people, and practices growing and changing. The
genealogies of other organic models, such as the arboretic or the rhizome, do not
sufficiently describe the ephemera that are included in the paths of the
Alternative spiritual seekers. The tree is too purposive and linear, while the
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rhizome is too arbitrary. The web is, however, diaphanous like the spiritualities
of Alternative and New Age seekers and its spiral form affirms the creative
self-reflective process of the central web-maker. At the same time, the image of
the web includes manifold interconnections representative of the eclectic
plethora of influences upon the spiritual seeker. The adoption of the web model
creates a flexible skeletal structure to define network connections and, as an
organic form, allows for the limitless differentiations of the individual webs.
This paper highlights the ways in which place, people, and practices
interconnect to create nodal systems. It examines the modalities by which
individuals and organisations within Alternative spiritualities engage with their
own particular worldviews and connect with those of other individuals, groups,
and organisations in the process of their spiritual quests. Each of these three
distinguishable networks—places, people, and practices—nest, in Capra’s
description, within each other.
A further important theoretical distinction is necessary prior to the descriptive
presentation of the Schumacher–Resurgence–Kumar nexus. A predominant
feature of the growth of Alternative webs is expressed in the relationships of
people and places, people and organisations, and between individuals. Some of
these relationships are formalised, through, for example, housing arrangements,
work places and contracts, but many are informal and for the scholar of religion
more difficult to trace, although they may be more significant than any formal
ties. Network hubs, such as Schumacher College and the magazine Resurgence,
may be investigated on a superficial level in terms of their formal relationships
with other organisations. We may therefore study and define, to use Ninian
Smart’s term, the ‘material dimension’ of these organisations. Furthermore, in a
comparative manner it would be useful to engage in detailed research of
contiguous organisational structures. In terms of retreat centres and colleges,
comparable organisations to Schumacher College are emerging all over the
world, for example, Esalen Institute, Naropa Institute, Whitney Institute (US),
Findhorn, Sharpham (UK), Krishnamurti centre, Bija Vidyapeeth (India), Cortijo
Romero (Spain); however, while there is a plethora of new magazines and
journals relevant to Alternative spirituality, few have the intellectual range of
Resurgence, although one may investigate, for example, The Ecologist in the UK
and Utne Reader in the US. Thus, comparative study and focus on formal links
between webs is a possible beginning to a study of webs of Alternative
spirituality, but this kind of research may be defined as ‘horizontal’—richer
 316 D. Corrywright

results will result from a ‘vertical’ approach that follows the threads of informal
relationships.
The outline of this paper follows this broad formal/informal distinction as an
‘ideal type’, but, as the final section will make clear, such synthetic
categorisations do not fully or accurately reflect the cloudy waters of the
territory. It must be recognised that, at least at the level of each individual’s
unique web of praxis and beliefs, to distinguish between formal and informal
connections is to apply criteria not wholly appropriate to the ways in which the
individual understands his/her spirituality. Equally, it will be observed that
organisational structures, while more open to the categorisations of discrete
formal boundaries, are in fact intricately supported in their material existence by
webs of informal relationships.
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Nodes in a Web: Schumacher College, Resurgence, Satish Kumar

I began the paper by referring to two important elements: Jonathan Z. Smith’s
model of map-making and the very real physical geography of Dartmoor.
Geographical location is a significant aspect of the study of religions. Sacred sites
and places of pilgrimage are themselves centres of historical, mythological, and
geological structures of the immanence of the divine. Contemporary studies of
New Age centres of significance have paid heed to geographical locality—for
example, Steve Sutcliffe’s research on Findhorn (2003) and Marian Bowman’s
study of Glastonbury (2000). Wild places, as can be found on the moors, offer
possibilities of religious experience that Eliade termed ‘hierophanies’—the
elemental experience of sacred place and time. Researchers of ‘earth mysteries’,
most significantly Paul Devereux (in the UK), are investigating the geological
significance of sacred sites. Devereux (1999) cites Dartmoor as a rich centre for
the geology and archaeology of sacred places. It is around the edge of this
geographical feature that two nodes of a growing Alternative spirituality in the
UK with global resonances are located. The Schumacher College is situated on
the south coast of Devon, near the town of Totnes. Resurgence is edited and
published from Hartland on the north Devon coast. Although no geological
feature, cosmological leyline or direct road connects these two centres, they are
linked by the weekly journey of Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence and academic
director of Schumacher College. This journey represents the primary thread that
connects the two organisational structures, around which a multiplicity of
connections has developed—from the scholars who contribute articles to
Resurgence and offer courses at the College, to those who participate in courses
at the College and read the articles in the journal, to the fact that each advertises
the other, to the values and worldview which are common to both nodes. Thus
a web of interconnections can be defined. Yet we may also define separate webs
with different contributors, different audiences, and different localities, which
leads to the image of webs of interdependence. Furthermore, the web of Satish
Kumar’s interests and activities may be defined as a third node, for it is also
discrete and expands beyond either of the two loci, from his local network of
human relationships to his background as a former Jain monk and the traditions,
culture, and geography of his birth place, India.
The cultural, philosophical, and religious traditions of India are an important
source and resource among Alternative spiritualities. Satish Kumar’s biography
 Alternative Spirituality Networks 317

and intellectual history entwine with the present connections of Schumacher

College and the sub-continent, but the College’s existence is dependent upon
other, historical, threads which tie it to India. The College is a part of the
Dartington Hall Trust, world famous especially for its music summer schools.
The trust is a legacy of Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst who established
Dartington Hall as an educational establishment, inspired and influenced by
poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan University in Bengal.
In 1921, Leonard Elmhirst, while studying at Cornell University, was invited by
Tagore to help found the Institute of Rural Reconstruction, later called Sriniketan
(‘abode of grace’). The economic, social, and aesthetic implications of
agricultural practices and heritage were a significant part of Elmhirst’s interests
in Shantiniketan. Elmhirst was also interested in a naturalistic developmental
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approach to education, contiguous in approach to the educational theories of

Rudolph Steiner, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Montessori, and Summerhill School, all of
which later influenced or were influenced in some way by the Elmhirsts
establishing Dartington Hall’s secondary boarding school. Elmhirst wrote that

Education is sometimes called a tool and is thought of as factory

process … But education implies growth and therefore life where the
child begins to achieve freedom through experience …

… We may stimulate, we may encourage and sympathise, we may

provide the means and the opportunity, but if we are honest in our
desire to give the child freedom to grow we shall be very careful not to
superimpose our own rules, creeds and regulations … Complete
freedom then the child must have to adventure in the realm of song, of
music, of poetry, if it wishes, of drama and dance, to revel in the
expression of ideas through colour, line or form, or to wander on the
limitless horizon of solitary thought and meditation, in touch with the
still small voice within. (Elmhirst & Tagore, 1961: 83–84)

While with Tagore in India (1922–1923), Elmhirst helped establish a small village
school called Siksha-Satra which incorporated these entwined philosophies of
education, farming, rural development, and artistic expression. Gandhi was so
impressed with Siksha-Satra that he employed one of the staff from the school to
help found his all-India programme for education, which he called ‘basic
education’ (Elmhirst & Tagore, 1961: 13–14). These themes fed into the
establishment of the progressive Dartington Hall School, part of which
functioned in the buildings around The Old Postern, where Schumacher College
now operates. The school closed down in the 1980s and the Trust looked for
another educational enterprise to fulfil the Elmhirsts’ mission for Dartington
Hall. Schumacher College was the beneficiary of the Trust’s interest in
education.
In January 1991, Schumacher College accepted its first course participants for
a five-week programme led by James Lovelock (originator of the ‘Gaia
hypothesis’) on ‘The Health of Gaia’—an area very much in accord with the
themes of environment and creative responses to modernity investigated by
Tagore and Elmhirst. Anne Phillips, the current administrative director of the
College, recognises the significance of this historical connecting thread:
 318 D. Corrywright

In the 1920s the Elmhirsts had the same concerns as we have

today—quality of life, the purpose of existence and the values which
transcend mere material prosperity. Our answers are different now but
I think the questions remain the same. (quoted in Nicholson-Lord, 2001:
38)
A further connecting thread is worth noting: both Gandhi’s and Tagore’s
philosophies of education influenced Satish Kumar when he established the
Small School in Hartland, north Devon, and the ideas he generated with the
other founders of Schumacher College.
The other primary influence on the values and content of the College is its
namesake, E. F. Schumacher. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (1973), significantly
sub-titled, A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, is a prime source for
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scholars who seek the intellectual foundations of the green, ecology, and
environmental movements, the agenda of contemporary anti-capitalists and it is
one element of the holistic paradigms espoused by many individuals who
investigate Alternative spiritualities. For the eponymous college, Schumacher is
a role model (as exemplar) for the intellectual rigour underpinning the
approaches to ecology, business, and sustainability developed within each
course. These contemporary webs of significance and effect can be traced again
to India as a birthplace for philosophies of interdependence. For Schumacher’s
inspiration is derived from Buddhism, specifically an interpretation of ‘right
livelihood’, which places a spiritual value on human worth rather than material
value. Schumacher (1974: 47) states:
While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is
mainly interested in liberation. But Buddhism is ‘The Middle Way’ and
therefore in no way antagonistic to physical well being. It is not wealth
that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth; not
the enjoyment of pleasurable things but the craving for them. The
keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicity and
non-violence. From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the
Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern—amazingly
small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results.
Schumacher’s Indian inspirations were also rather more specific, in the form of
the economist J. C. Kumarappa, author of Economy of Permanence: A Quest for
Social Order Based on Non-Violence (1945). Kumarappa was employed by Gandhi
to establish Panchayat Raj or the rule of village communes.2 Kumarappa was also
an important influence on the peace activist and Hindu scholar Vinoba Bhave
who, in turn, was personally significant in the worldview of Satish Kumar
(Kumar, 2002: 67–86).
The specific locality of Schumacher College is a further vital strand in its web
of existence. Formally, there are open evenings on every Wednesday while
courses are running at the College. These events are advertised in local
bookshops and through the network of word-of-mouth communication. The
purpose of these events, according to Anne Phillips, is to inform, and share with,
the local community the skills and knowledge of the specialist teachers during
their brief visits while they are running courses. Visitors at these evenings
number between 30 and 50, many of whom are regular attendees. In terms of a
broad diffusion of the College’s intellectual resources to a wide community, the
 Alternative Spirituality Networks 319

effectiveness of these events is questionable. Discussions with visitors at these

events indicated a range of individual interests: some were wholly committed to
the values of Schumacher College, others sought a general intellectual or artistic
inspiration from the wide diversity of visiting lecturers.
There is some tension between the values and mission of the tenets of ‘local’
and ‘small-scale’ and the actual activities and role of the College’s global
presence. Schumacher (1973: 29) explains the value of small-scale operations as
follows:
Small-scale operations, no matter how numerous, are always less likely
to be harmful to the natural environment than large-scale ones, simply
because their individual force is small in relation to the recuperative
forces of nature.
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It is a value that underwrites many of the College’s activities. On a daily

operative level, this is exemplified by the use of local and organic ingredients in
the kitchen. A further example of the focus on locality is the College’s refusal to
develop formal links with distant, although contiguous organisations. Both the
College’s administrative director and the academic director separately
responded to the assertion that a larger organisation would have greater impact
in exporting ideas with the same question: ‘what real purpose would extending
formal links to similar organisations serve?’ A larger organisation, the directors
state, would increase bureaucracy and decrease diversity. The ‘deep ecology’
principles of bio-diversity underpinning the ethos of Schumacher College
(Naess, 1989) include intellectual and cultural diversity—large organisations
promote mono-cultures. Yet the tension remains evident in Schumacher
College’s material existence and the connections, or lack of them, with the local
community. For example, there are no events linking Schumacher with the local
primary school; although the College is adjacent to the village church, a
long-term member of the College staff agreed that his visits to early morning
communion represent the only significant thread linking the College to the
Church (the vicar is invited to open evenings, but is a rare visitor); nor are there
links with Buckfast Abbey, a few miles away. These lacunae of local connection
stand in contrast to the global provenance of course teachers and participants.
By 2001, there had been more than 2,000 participants since the College’s
inception, approximately half of whom had been British, the other half
representing 80 different nationalities (Nicholson-Lord, 2001: 39). A significant
proportion of the course leaders reside in countries other than the UK (even
Roger Deakin, a Suffolk resident, arrived at the College directly from researching
a book on trees among the forests of walnut and apple in Kyrgyztan). The
existence of the College is only possible because of trans-global communications.
The financial health of the College is dependent upon the contributions of
overseas students.
Despite renouncing the value of formal ties with distant organisations
working in similar fields, both directors of the College actively support informal
links with contiguous organisations where there are connections with
individuals. Thus, they have agreed that a nascent college, the Whidbey
Institute, in Washington State USA, established by ex-students of Schumacher
College, can use Schumacher College in promotional material. Informal support
is also provided for Vandana Shiva, physicist, environmental activist, regular
 320 D. Corrywright

contributor to Resurgence, and teacher at the College, who has founded a college
in Northern India, which is inspired by Schumacher College, called Bija
Vidyapeth. Satish Kumar leads courses at Bija Vidyapeth in part, in his words,
to lend the informal support of the Schumacher College’s director.
Beyond these informal ties of association are the informal links developed as
part of the wider activities of teachers at the College. A significant link is with
Sharpham College, also located close to Totnes in Devon, which is, according to
its promotional literature, ‘inspired and informed by Buddhist teachings’. In
October 2002, Satish Kumar provided a lecture in Sharpham College’s Tuesday
evening public talk series, called ‘Reverential Ecology: Taking Deep Ecology a
Step Further’. In November 2002, Jordi Pigem, a resident lecturer in philosophy
at Schumacher College, delivered a lecture in the same series, called ‘Buddhism
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and Modern Science’. Thus the web that links Schumacher’s interest in Buddhist
economics Kumar’s interest in deep ecology and Buddhism (that stems partly
from his personal association with Schumacher—Kumar, 2002: 113–120) extends
also into the web of Buddhist practice and research at Sharpham College and
The Barn (also on the Sharpham estate). Links between other local residential
and course centres, such as Gaia House and Monkton Wyld Court, do not
appear to have been created, although these are nodes in the web of Alternative
spiritualities with overlapping values and interests to those of Schumacher
College.
Schumacher College, in partnership with the University of Plymouth, also
offers a full-time one-year MSc in Holistic Science—defined in the prospectus as
‘the first of its kind’. An important distinction between this element of the
College’s activities and its central vision statement3 relates to the use of the term
‘spiritual’. The MSc prospectus does not contain any reference to spirituality and
discussions with current students indicated two conclusions: firstly, that the
subject of spirituality has no explicit role in the course, although most students
confirmed an implicit spirituality (and some students stated they would have
been interested in a more explicit statement on spirituality); secondly, that the
secular terminology of holistic science, Gaia theory, and ‘emergent properties’
has overridden this aspect of discourse on spirituality. The currency and use of
the term ‘spirituality’ has its own interesting phenomenology investigated at
length elsewhere (Chatterjee, 1987; King, 1997; Rose, 2001). It should be noted
that in this historical moment, some areas of alternative thought that seem
generically ‘spiritual’ are avoiding the use of the term.
There are many other threads connecting Schumacher College to streams of
Alternative spirituality that cannot be covered here. However, one final link of
significance for this paper relates to the expansion of the network in the
development of the Schumacher Lectures. Manuel Castells has described the
evolutionary expansion of networks as a core element of their strength and
dynamism:

Networks are open structures, able to expand without limits,

integrating new nodes as long as they are able to communicate within
the network, namely as long as they share the same communication
codes (for example, values or performance goals). A network-based
social structure is a highly dynamic, open system, susceptible to
innovating without threatening its balance. (Castells, 1996: 470)
 Alternative Spirituality Networks 321

The Schumacher Lectures began as a series of annual events that were held in
the city of Bristol, on issues related to economics and the environment. They
have now run for a number of years and expanded to other cities in the UK. As
David Nicholson-Lord points out, while providing examples of the many
worldwide projects carried out by ex-Schumacher College students, attendance
at a Schumacher College course provided impetus for one student to extend this
aspect of the network:
Linda Gibson, a university teacher, went back to Liverpool after a
course in 1996 and helped to launch the Liverpool Schumacher
Lectures, the first to be held outside Bristol. (Nicholson-Lord, 2001: 39)
A vital thread connects Schumacher College with Resurgence. Chronologically,
the thread begins with Schumacher, his many articles for Resurgence, the
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publication of Small is Beautiful (1973), and only later, 14 years after his death,
with the establishment of his namesake college. Small is Beautiful is a collection
of papers and essays delivered in a variety of contexts, of which a significant
number were first published in early issues of Resurgence. The magazine is 36
years old. From its inception, it has been a hub for the expression of ecological
philosophy and alternative models of economy. As a node in a wider web of
individuals, groups, and organisations in the UK it parallels the development of,
on the one hand, sites, such as the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales
(which investigates, to use the Schumacherian term ‘intermediate’ technology)
and Findhorn in Scotland (which investigates, in a New Age form, human
relationships with nature and the divine). Editorship of the magazine passed
from its founder-editor John Papworth to Satish Kumar and his wife June
Mitchell in 1975. Resurgence functions both as a journal, in that it is a collection
of erudite papers that are edited, and on occasion edited by guest editors, on
specific themes with detailed book reviews, and as a magazine with interviews,
regular features, recipes, and advertisements. It serves as broad sheet and
bulletin board for a diverse community of the environmentally aware, ecological
activists, and spiritual seekers.
The role of magazines, newspapers, and related publications as vital nodes in
the network of Alternative spiritualities has been described by a number of
scholars investigating new religious phenomena (Melton, 1988; Rose, 1996;
Corrywright, 2001a). Melton (1988: 43) states that the New Age movement is,
like other similar de-centralised organisations, kept informed by periodicals and
given a sense of unity by these media. However, the nature of the ‘periodical’
as an artefact is changing rapidly in the early twenty-first century. Although
there are many periodicals and journals printed in the UK relating to Alternative
and New Age phenomena (The Spark, South West Connection, One Earth, Human
Potential, Resurgence, Caduceus, Kindred Spirit, The Ecologist, to name but a few
local and national publications),4 there is an increasing dependence and use of
internet publications as a networking resource. Indeed, as Manuel Castells
asserts:
Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and
the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation
and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power and
culture. While the networking form of social organisation has existed in
other times and spaces, the new information technology paradigm
 322 D. Corrywright

provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the
entire social structure. (Castells, 1996: 469)
The ubiquity of access and diffusion of internet resources should not perhaps be
quite so overstated. Rather, the internet is, at this point in the early twenty-first
century, one among many sources for disseminating information and providing
connections between the multiple nodes of the web. The easy, available,
user-friendly format for distributing the ideas and information relevant to the
web of Alternative spiritualities is for many still to be found in hard copy
(although a web site, http://www.resurgence.org, contains parallel copies of
recent editions of the magazine and Schumacher College maintains an important
web site, http://www.gn.apc.org/schumachercollege). From the perspective of
the consumer, hard copy is a vital mode of connection, especially for those
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unable to link through other nodes, such as the World Wide Web. Resurgence is
a gateway into a wide network of different practices and it is readily available
because of its broad distribution. From the perspective of those who place the
advertisements, Resurgence represents a relatively inexpensive, cost effective
means of promotion, which reaches a large, diverse, yet focused readership
interested in the areas of ecology, education, creativity or Alternative
spiritualities. The implicit mission of Resurgence is equally well expressed by the
nationally distributed Positive News, a free newspaper, which acts as a source of
news stories from around the world about ‘creative solutions’ in progress,
especially those related to deep ecology issues of sustainability and renewable
resources. A major impetus for these publications is the diffusion of knowledge
about ‘creative solutions’ to inform and extend the network. The process of
linking the network is contained in the metaphysical and very real physical
notion of making connections.
The idea of connection resonates as a core spiritual principle in traditional
religions and among Alternative spiritualities. E. M. Forster’s phrase ‘only
connect’ is consciously adopted by many engaged with Alternative spiritualities
to affirm an ethical and spiritual stance of engagement with especially ecological
activism and personal growth. Thus the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of
Resurgence was entitled ‘Only Connect’, where Satish Kumar’s preface expounds
a worldview which revolves around this theme:
Science connects with arts, matter with mind, body with spirit, nature
with culture, individual with community, knowledge with wisdom and
earth with heaven—forming the new trinity of Soil, Soul, Society and
creating a sense of belonging to the earth community at large. (Kumar,
2000b, 201: 3)
The conception of Satish Kumar of a ‘new’ trinity is an attempt to move beyond
the limited notion of a New Age movement that focuses merely on Mind, Body,
and Spirit. Kumar considers the New Age trinity of Mind, Body, Spirit to be a
welcome development from the ‘social trinity’ of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, as the
New Age has introduced a spiritual dimension. However, according to Kumar
(2000a, 200: 6), ‘this only replaces one partial view with another. This personal
trinity ignores the social reality and again leaves out the natural world.’ The
addition of solidity—in soil and society—provides a foundation for the
non-anthropomorphic approach to the environment, which can yet be sustained
or destroyed by human activity, defined by deep ecology. Kumar’s assertion of
 Alternative Spirituality Networks 323

‘soul’ as a third element promotes a further principle which he calls ‘reverential

ecology’ (Kumar, 2002: 181). The interconnection of these three themes inspires
the editorial commitment to the continued publication of Resurgence.
Resurgence is a bi-monthly publication and has a print run of 14,000 copies.
Considine and Ferguson (1994: 158) assert that in publishing, ‘it is widely agreed
that each magazine is seen by an average of four people’. A readership of
approximately 56,000 is equal to a number of other nationally distributed
magazines in the UK. However, it is probable that the resonances of Resurgence
equate to a much higher number of readers, as the publication has a worldwide
distribution network with agents and distributors in Australia, Canada, Japan,
South Africa, and the US. The web site provides a further portal for the
dissemination of Resurgence, although the number of ‘hits’ to record its use is not
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listed.
Articles, features, and editorial form only one set of connections with
Resurgence’s readership. Two recent research theses have investigated in detail
the wider role of periodicals in connecting a network of readers and contributors
(Rose, 1996; Corrywright, 2001a). Using Kindred Spirit in his research, Stuart Rose
(1996: 96) notes that ‘specialist magazines [also] provide substantial networking
resource sections’. His analysis of a single edition of Kindred Spirit in autumn
1994 led to the following (abbreviated) results:

245 entries had been listed for actual, dated New Age activities. In
addition there were 102 separate entries offering ongoing and undated
courses, seminars and workshops … In this single issue … it is not
possible to accurately quantify the precise number of events which
were available, although an estimate would suggest there to be well in
excess of 500 events networked in this one issue of one specialist
quarterly magazine. (Rose, 1996: 97)

Resurgence does not carry such a wide range of listings, but each issue includes
several pages of ‘small ads’ and ‘display ads’ as well as the many references to
texts and courses implicit in the features material. My own research into a free
newspaper, The Spark, elucidated the significant links between the networks of
places of distribution and the material distributed. A loose typology of
distribution sites included: educational centres, ethical businesses, health food
stores, medical centres, and centres for alternative therapies,
networking/meeting centres, major local businesses, and religious centres
(Corrywright, 2001a: 190–199). Further analysis focused on the readers of The
Spark and their individual webs of spirituality with varying levels of expression
and engagement (Corrywright, 2001a: 205–211). The links between five aspects
of these types of publication, editorial, features, ‘ads’, distribution, and
readership provide a typological framework for the web of a periodical.
However, a much larger study is required to elucidate all of these elements in
the case of Resurgence. The purpose of this paper has been achieved in outlining
some major aspects of the Resurgence web and in illustrating its interconnections
with other webs of significance, most especially, Schumacher College and the
activities of Satish Kumar.
 324 D. Corrywright

Conclusion: Levels of Network Engagement

Scholars weave their own webs of meaning, their approaches are structured by
their own trajectories of experience, their traces are formed by past and current
sympathies and, to use Goethe’s perspective on human interests, their ‘elective
affinities’ or predispositions. I approach my studies in Alternative spiritualities
as an intellectual historian. Adopting Arthur Lovejoy’s (1960) notion of strands
in the history of ideas leads to important questions about the formation of these
strands—can Alternative spiritualities be reduced to certain essential elements
from which they derived their original impetus? Is it the task of the scholar to
seek these essential elements, in history or in the current morphology of the
idea? Verstehen suggests that there are a-historical essences, as does the
application of taxonomical structures, such as the model of the web—at least on
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a structural level. Yet traces in history cannot be reduced to merely essential

elements. They are more than, and different from, an identity with their sources.
Thus it is a valuable scholarly project to follow the histories that inform the
present Alternative spiritualities, whether they be along the lines of Robert
Ellwood’s (1992) question of ‘How New is the New Age?’ or Colin Campbell’s
(1999) broader consideration of ‘The Easternisation of the West’. In the study of
the current morphology of religion, the webs of interconnection described here
are a ‘snapshot’ of a dynamic process. The intuition provides insight into the
current phenomenology of that process.
A number of assertions about the current webs of Schumacher College,
Resurgence, and Satish Kumar have been made in this paper. The first is related
to the structural processes of interaction. The structure of the web is reticulated
by a variety of causal connections or interactions whereby one element or node
is or has been in communication with another. Thus a web expands when one
aspect of a phenomenon comes into contact with another phenomenon. These
points of contact or links range from insignificant to highly influential. Arne
Naess, who has both taught at Schumacher College and written for Resurgence,
provides a strong connecting thread between the two phenomena, while a casual
visitor to the College who scans through a copy of Resurgence makes a weak link.
This observation needs to be historicised by recognising the specific context that
Arne Naess’s influence may decline and the casual visitor may yet become
highly committed and involved with both organisations. Furthermore, I have
distinguished between formal and informal modalities of connection. A vital
aspect of this research model and the research process it engenders is the
recognition of the significance of informal threads, for which there is often no
primary evidence. The threads of causal connection can often only be discovered
in ethnography, oral accounts, and frequently, through biographical
research—ways into the web of human relationships, happenstance,
word-of-mouth networking, and synchronicity. Simple material record, which is
the basis of descriptive analysis, cannot uncover informal ramifications. The
consequences of informal modes of connection may become formalised and
evident at a later date in new charters, visions or mission statements.
The second assertion is that this model can be equally well applied to a range
of phenomena. Schumacher College is an organisation that has a physical
geographically fixed location, whereas Resurgence is a publication that is
distributed and diffused and Satish Kumar is able to travel and settle where he
 Alternative Spirituality Networks 325

wills (he has walked from India to Europe, across America and around the
United Kingdom—see Kumar, 1992).
A third implicit assertion, drawing on the first two, is the assumption that the
modes of interconnection that form the webs are not dependent on the type of
central node from which the threads of connection are created. While it is useful
to differentiate between the characteristics of nodal centres—as organisation,
periodical or individual—it is not necessary to distinguish webs by types or
numbers of interconnections. It may simply be stated that in general,
organisations such as Schumacher College create larger webs of significance than
individuals and that there are more formal connections to other webs (or—in
other words—their material dimension has greater physical existence and it is
therefore easier for the historian to gather evidence).
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A certain truism is recognisable here: the network process is a fundamental

structure of how humans have always interacted. Equally, the existence of webs
of interconnection is an essential feature of life on earth. There is nothing new
in this theory. There are, however, two new ‘spins’ on the idea of the web,
related to emphasis and application. Firstly, the emphasis is holistic rather than
atomistic and segmentary, as has been the tendency in western modes of critical
thought since the Enlightenment. Secondly, the application is novel in terms of
the subject—the Schumacher–Resurgence–Kumar nexus—and within the field of
the study of religions.
In a short story from his collection Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges (1970) has a
twentieth-century author painstakingly rewrite Miguel de Cervantes Don
Quixote word-for-word, not by copying, but by recreating the details of
Cervantes’s experience and knowledge to the minutest expression and then
writing Don Quixote exactly as Cervantes did. The text is wonderful for making
the impossibility of the task possible. It is also inspiring because Borges
describes the process of facsimile as a genuinely creative act. There is no entirely
new expression he suggests, but neither is there ever, except in short stories, an
exact reiteration of the old. There is always novelty and it is the differentiations
and distinctions of new applications and new contexts that give rise to growth.
Zen Buddhist teaching characterises this understanding in terms of ‘the identity
of the relative and the absolute’. The unique and discrete world of the wholly
relative is set into the absolute truth of perennial novelty. Yet new
differentiations and distinctions necessarily emerge as part of historical cycles.
There is value in reiterating the old in new contexts and new applications. There
are ever new ramifications, especially where a theory, such as that of the web,
has not been examined in detail in the field, as has been carried out here. To
simplistically historicise the work in this paper, the complex multiple webs
studied here exist ‘out there’, but are also constructed elsewhere, in the
discourse that is re-engaging with organic network structures as models for
knowledge. The input of my research to that theoretical discourse is to define
greater subtleties on how the webs work and provide evidence to support these
claims.

Dr Dominic Corrywright is Senior Lecturer and Field Chair in the Study of Religions
at Oxford Brookes University. His recently completed PhD thesis on Theoretical and
Empirical Investigations into New Age Spiritualities (2001a) is published by Peter
Lang (2003). His key research interests and publications are related to contemporary
 326 D. Corrywright

spirituality, New Age, and New Religious Movements. Other research interests include
theory and methodology in the study of religions and contemporary Buddhism.
CORRESPONDENCE: Oxford Brookes University, Westminster Institute of
Education, Harcourt Hill, Oxford OX2 9AT, UK.

NOTES
1. Flood’s programme for the use of dialogic hermeneutics is both a well supported critique of
methodology in the study of religions and a thoroughly engaging account of how critical theory
and hermeneutics may be used to arrive at a nuanced methodology and subtle methods to
investigate religions. However, I cannot help feeling that on a practical level, dialogic method is
no more advanced than the interpretivism developed by social anthropologists in the 1970s
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(Geertz, 1973).
2. While Schumacher does refer to Kumarappa once in Small is Beautiful (1974: 46), it has been
suggested by some Indian commentators that insufficient attention has been paid outside India
to Kumarappa’s influence on Schumacher (personal correspondence with Jyoti Sahi, to whom I
am also indebted for details on Kumarappa’s life and work). Indeed, the oversight seems to
continue to the present day, as Joseph Pearce’s Small is Still Beautiful (2001) also makes only one
brief reference to Kumarappa (Pearce, 2001: 65).
3. The current Schumacher College prospectus begins with a vision statement which includes the
following: “Schumacher College offers rigorous enquiry to uncover the roots of the prevailing
world view; it explores ecological approaches which value holistic rather than reductionist
perspectives and spiritual rather than consumerist values” (emphasis added).
4. The growth in alternative periodicals is remarkable: “There are now 26 New Awareness
magazines distributed to the general public, and at least 100 more that cater to more specialist
New Consciousness publics” (Considine & Ferguson, 1994: 158).

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