Surrogate religion, spiritual materialism or protestant ethic? Three accounts of the function of religiosity in anti-ageing

This paper sets out to explore the conceptual requirements and semantic dimensions for the reconstruction of the links between anti-ageing and religious narratives of old age. Three arguments are presented from the existing literature; anti-ageing is interpreted first as a surrogate religious narrative, second as spiritual materialism and third as a residual effect of the Protestant Ethic. These arguments are explored in three ethnographic case studies presenting the religious anti-ageing narratives of, respectively, a user, a lobbyist and an entrepreneur from the German-speaking anti-ageing movement. While none of the cases clearly supports one of the established arguments, they do point to a powerful amalgamation of scientific and religious narratives, representative of an upsurge in materialistic values in religious interpretations of ageing and religiously legitimated calls for a new, self-controlling ethic in anti-ageing, one which seems to foster the individualisation of the risks of ageing in line with the commodification of the ageing body.