ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rise of mindfulness as a popular psychological fashion, focusing on English-language media discourses. It argues that the public prominence of mindfulness may be usefully interpreted in terms of the contemporary socio-cultural dominance of the psychological imagination. The psychological imagination draws on medical and scientific authority to address social problems as private concerns rooted in individual conduct. We analyse how the intersection of academic claims-making and commercial interests have given rise to a mindfulness industry from the late 1970s onwards. In this context, we first map the transition of mindfulness from Buddhist philosophy into Western psychotherapy in the 1970s and 1980s. We then examine its expansion into popular psychology from the 1990s on, through conceptual entrepreneurship and the growing presence of mindfulness in media narratives. On this basis, we consider the implications of the rise of the psychological imagination for the public status of sociological reasoning.
