Understanding Burning Man Through Fundamental Religious Studies Theories
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Anomie and His Spray Tan: the Life, Work, and Contemporary
Anomie and His Spray Tan: The Life, Work, and Contemporary Relevance of Émile Durkheim Caity Rose Campana RLG 6013: Modern Analysis of Religion Professor Whitney Bauman 12 December 2019 1 “…Religion must be an eminently collective thing.”1 These few words, which bring an unsentimental end to the first chapter of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, reflect the essence of Émile Durkheim’s theory of religion. It is this ardent focus on the social aspects of life, culture, identity construction, and being in the world that not only set Durkheim apart, but cement his position as one of the architects of modern sociology. While a comprehensive review of this theorist’s life and work is certainly beyond the 6,000-word scope of this paper, the goal of the next twenty pages is to briefly examine Durkheim’s background, highlight the most compelling and unique elements of his theories and methodology, and apply those elements to several contemporary issues. Among these topics are questions relating to the global environmental crisis, pluralism, and globalization (with a particular focus on the recent proliferation of nationalist and isolationist policies around the world). If anything, this essay seeks to explore why it is that Durkheim’s name, regardless of whether or not one agrees with his ideas, appears to always have a place—out of respect or otherwise—in academic discussions of society, religion, and culture. In doing so, my hope is twofold: (1) to transport Durkheim’s conceptual framework into a modern arena, thereby rendering it more accessible and relevant, and (2) to ensure that Durkheim’s contributions to the field of religious studies are understood not simply in their own historical and sociological context, but also in the context of their many critiques. -
Burning Man's Mathematical Underbelly
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research New York City College of Technology 2018 Burning Man’s Mathematical Underbelly Seth S. Cottrell CUNY New York City College of Technology How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ny_pubs/306 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Burning Man’s Mathematical Underbelly A math degree can take you to a lot of places, both physically and figuratively, and if you play your cards right, you too can argue counterfactual definiteness with a shaman. First in 2008, and several times since, a fellow math PhD and I traveled to the Burning Man art festival to sit in the desert and talk with the locals about whatever they happened to be curious about. Burning Man began in 1986, when a group of people (who would argue endlessly over any finite list of their names) decided to assemble annually on a San Francisco beach and burn a wooden human effigy. In 1990, membership and a lack of fire permits forced Burning Man to combine with Zone #4, a “Dadaist temporary autonomous zone” piloted by the Cacophony Society, in the Black Rock Desert 110 miles outside of Reno, Nevada. Figure 1: Although The Man itself changes very little from year to year, his surroundings do. In this version from 2009, he’s surrounded by a forest of two by fours. -
Explaining Interaction Ritual Chains in American Megachurches1
Sociological Forum, Vol. 29, No. 3, September 2014 DOI: 10.1111/socf.12108 © 2014 Eastern Sociological Society “God Is Like a Drug...”: Explaining Interaction Ritual Chains in American Megachurches1 James K. Wellman Jr.,2 Katie E. Corcoran,3 and Kate Stockly-Meyerdirk4 Megachurches have been criticized as superficial sources of entertainment that do not produce significant feelings of belonging, moral responsibility, or spirituality. This article challenges popular criticisms of mega- churches and, drawing on interaction ritual theory, proposes that megachurches are successful interaction rit- ual venues and powerful purveyors of emotional religious experience. We predict that these interaction rituals produce positive emotional energy, membership symbols that are charged with emotional significance, feelings of morality, and a heightened sense of spirituality. From a census of 1,250 known megachurches in America, 12 were selected that closely represent the national megachurch profile. At each church, focus groups were conducted and attendees participated in a survey. We combine these data sources to provide a more comprehensive picture of the megachurch interaction ritual. The combined qualitative and quantitative results provide strong support for our predictions. KEY WORDS: emotion; interaction rituals; megachurches; membership; religion; spirituality. INTRODUCTION The emergence of megachurches has transformed the American religious land- scape (Chaves 2006). American Christianity has shifted from a smattering of main- line and evangelical Protestant denominational churches to a veritable cavalcade of postmodern, postsuburban, postdenominational megachurches (Ellingson 2010; Thumma and Travis 2007; Wilford 2012). Since the 1970s, these high-profile, high- energy, and highly popular megachurches have been growing and multiplying at an unprecedented rate. In the United States, the number of megachurches has increased from 350 in 1990, to over 600 in 2000. -
Consumer Cynicism: Developing a Scale to Measure Underlying Attitudes Influencing Marketplace Shaping and Withdrawal Behaviours Amanda E
bs_bs_banner International Journal of Consumer Studies ISSN 1470-6423 Consumer cynicism: developing a scale to measure underlying attitudes influencing marketplace shaping and withdrawal behaviours Amanda E. Helm1, Julie Guidry Moulard2 and Marsha Richins3 1Division of Business, Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, LA 70125, USA 2College of Business, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA 71272, USA 3Department of Marketing, College of Business, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA Keywords Abstract Consumer activism, consumer rebellion, consumer cynicism, consumer skepticism, This article develops the construct of consumer cynicism, characterized by a perception of consumer alienation, consumer trust. a pervasive, systemic lack of integrity in the marketplace and investigates how cynical consumers behave in the marketplace. The construct was developed based on a qualitative Correspondence study and triangulated through developing a scale and investigating antecedents and Amanda E. Helm, Division of Business, Xavier consequential marketplace behaviours. The cynicism construct is uniquely suited to explain University of Louisiana, New Orleans, LA the underlying psychological processes hinted at in practitioner perceptions of the growing 70125, USA. E-mail: [email protected] mistrust and consumer research about rebellion behaviours, as well as to offer insight on consumers’ response to the increasingly sophisticated market. Previous research has doi: 10.1111/ijcs.12191 offered a glimpse of extreme rebellion behaviours such -
Durkheim and Organizational Culture
IRLE IRLE WORKING PAPER #108-04 June 2004 Durkheim and Organizational Culture James R. Lincoln and Didier Guillot Cite as: James R. Lincoln and Didier Guillot. (2004). “Durkheim and Organizational Culture.” IRLE Working Paper No. 108-04. http://irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/108-04.pdf irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers Durkheim and Organizational Culture James R. Lincoln Walter A. Haas School of Business University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 Didier Guillot INSEAD Singapore June , 2004 Prepared for inclusion in Marek Kocsynski, Randy Hodson, and Paul Edwards (editors): Social Theory at Work . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Durkheim and Organizational Culture “The degree of consensus over, and intensity of, cognitive orientations and regulative cultural codes among the members of a population is an inv erse function of the degree of structural differentiation among actors in this population and a positive, multiplicative function of their (a) rate of interpersonal interaction, (b) level of emotional arousal, and (c) rate of ritual performance. ” Durkheim’ s theory of culture as rendered axiomatically by Jonathan Turner (1990) Introduction This paper examines the significance of Emile Durkheim’s thought for organization theory , particular attention being given to the concept of organizational culture. We ar e not the first to take the project on —a number of scholars have usefully addressed the extent and relevance of this giant of Western social science for the study of organization and work. Even so, there is no denying that Durkheim’s name appears with vast ly less frequency in the literature on these topics than is true of Marx and W eber, sociology’ s other founding fathers . -
ABSTRACT Effervescence and Solidarity in Religious
ABSTRACT Effervescence and Solidarity in Religious Organizations Scott Draper, Ph.D. Dissertation Chairperson: Paul Froese, Ph.D. This project is an effort to test and extend Randall Collins’ interaction ritual theory in the context of religious organizations. The theory proposes that optimal management of bodily copresence, intersubjectivity, and barriers to outsiders stimulates collective effervescence and social solidarity. I use mixed methods to test the theory. In the quantitative phase of research, I create measures of the ritual dynamics using data from the United States Congregational Life Survey (2001). I find strong support for several of the hypotheses, including the fundamental idea from Durkheim that effervescence stimulates solidarity. The quantitative findings also point to several extensions of the theory, such as the need to account for social density (an element of copresence) and service length (an element of intersubjectivity). In the qualitative phase of research, I observe rituals and talk with focus groups at six different types of religious organizations. Again, I find strong support for major propositions from the theory. For example, the two organizations (Promised Land Baptist and Congregation Shalom) who rally around a perceived need to defend themselves against specific outsiders exhibit the highest levels of effervescence in the sample. The qualitative findings reveal several additional extensions of the theory. As one example, I find that the content of solidarity symbols, whether collectivist (e.g., Promised Land Baptist) or individualist (e.g., First Baptist), conditions organizations’ ritual proficiency. As another example, qualitative analysis confirms the finding from the quantitative analysis that service length positively correlates with effervescence. The findings in this study are applicable to a wide range of research questions in sociology, as interaction ritual theory is a guide for understanding how groups and organizations arrive at shared identities, morals, and ideologies through micro-level interaction. -
Order in the Desert: Law Abiding Behavior at Burning Man
Journal of Dispute Resolution Volume 2013 Issue 2 Article 5 2013 Order in the Desert: Law Abiding Behavior at Burning Man Manuel A. Gomez Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/jdr Part of the Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons Recommended Citation Manuel A. Gomez, Order in the Desert: Law Abiding Behavior at Burning Man, 2013 J. Disp. Resol. (2013) Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/jdr/vol2013/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at University of Missouri School of Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Dispute Resolution by an authorized editor of University of Missouri School of Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Gomez: Gomez: Order in the Desert Order in the Desert: Law Abiding Behavior at Burning Man Manuel A. Gdmez INTRODUCTION Burning Man is an annual art event and temporary community based on radi- cal self-expression and self-reliance, in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.' The event is a week-long annual affair that draws more than fifty thousand partici- pants, known as "burners," from around the world. 2 The event takes place in the custom-built, temporary, Black Rock City,3 located in a prehistoric lakebed or "playa" in the Black Rock desert, more than one hundred miles from Reno. Black Rock City is rebuilt annually on seven square-miles of federal land in the southern point of the Black Rock Desert.4 Burners are explicitly encouraged to partake in acts of "radical self-expression." They do so through artistic performances; by creating interactive sculptures and other outdoors art installations, through cos- tumes and fashion, music, art vehicles, and visual media.5 *Associate Professor, Florida International University College of Law. -
Revolutionary Games and Repressive Tolerance: on the Hopes and Limits of Ludic Citizenship
http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2015.3.2.3.shepard European Journal of Humour Research 3 (2/3) 18–34 www.europeanjournalofhumour.org Revolutionary Games and repressive tolerance: on the hopes and limits of ludic citizenship Benjamin Shepard Human Services Dept., City University of New York [email protected] Abstract This essay considers examples of boisterous game play, including ludic movement activity and humour in the context of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the USA. This form of auto- ethnography makes use of the researcher’s feelings, inviting readers into the personal, emotional subjectivities of the author. In this case, the author explores games, play, and humour highlighting a few of the possibilities and limits of play as a mechanism of social change, looking at the spaces in which it controls and when it liberates. While play has often been relegated to the sports field and the behaviour of children, there are other ways of opening spaces for play for civic purposes and political mobilization. The paper suggests play as a resource for social movements; it adds life and joyousness to the process of social change. Without playful humour, the possibilities for social change are limited. Keywords: play, Occupy Wall Street, Marx, Burning Man, pie fights. 1. Introduction Art and activism overlap in countless ways throughout the history of art and social movements. This essay considers the ways games, humour and play intervene and support the process. Here, social reality is imagined as a game, in which social actors play in irreverent, often humorous ways. Such activity has multiple meanings. -
Dancing Into the Chthulucene: Sensuous Ecological Activism In
Dancing into the Chthulucene: Sensuous Ecological Activism in the 21st Century Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kelly Perl Klein Graduate Program in Dance Studies The Ohio State University 2019 Dissertation Dr. Harmony Bench, Advisor Dr. Ann Cooper Albright Dr. Hannah Kosstrin Dr. Mytheli Sreenivas Copyrighted by Kelly Perl Klein 2019 2 Abstract This dissertation centers sensuous movement-based performance and practice as particularly powerful modes of activism toward sustainability and multi-species justice in the early decades of the 21st century. Proposing a model of “sensuous ecological activism,” the author elucidates the sensual components of feminist philosopher and biologist Donna Haraway’s (2016) concept of the Chthulucene, articulating how sensuous movement performance and practice interpellate Chthonic subjectivities. The dissertation explores the possibilities and limits of performances of vulnerability, experiences of interconnection, practices of sensitization, and embodied practices of radical inclusion as forms of activism in the context of contemporary neoliberal capitalism and competitive individualism. Two theatrical dance works and two communities of practice from India and the US are considered in relationship to neoliberal shifts in global economic policy that began in the late 1970s. The author analyzes the dance work The Dammed (2013) by the Darpana Academy for Performing Arts in Ahmedabad, -
Street Art, Sweet Art? Reclaiming the “Public” in Public Place
Street Art, Sweet Art? Reclaiming the “Public” in Public Place LUCA M. VISCONTI JOHN F. SHERRY JR. STEFANIA BORGHINI LAUREL ANDERSON Consumer research has paid scant attention to public goods, especially at a time when the contestation between categorizing public and private goods and con- trolling public goods is pronounced. In this multisited ethnography, we explore the ways in which active consumers negotiate meanings about the consumption of a particular public good, public space. Using the context of street art, we document four main ideologies of public space consumption that result from the interaction, both conflict and common intent, of urban dwellers and street artists. We show how public space can be contested as private and commercialized, or offered back as a collective good, where sense of belonging and dialogue restore it to a mean- ingful place. We demonstrate how the common nature of space both stimulates dialectical and dialogical exchanges across stakeholders and fuels forms of layered agency. An empty wall is an empty population. (Field Venkatesh 2006, 307) via negotiated consumption behaviors site wall graffiti) (Murray 2002; Thompson and Haytko 1997). Those forms he variety of roles consumers play in the marketplace of consumer agency include acts of resistance (Kates 2002; T has long captivated the imagination of researchers. Not Kozinets 2002; Murray and Ozanne 1991), social move- only do consumers function as objects in the market, as ments (Kozinets and Handelman 2004), labor (Cova and targets of practitioners’ strategies, but also they act as sub- Dalli 2009), and political consumerism (Bostro¨m et al. 2005; jects by means of agentic “processes through which selves Micheletti, Follesdal, and Dietlind 2003). -
EDITORS Mark Frauenfelder Carla Sinclair Gareth Branwyn ONLINE DIRECTOR Willkreth ART DIRECTOR RIVERHEAD BOOKS, NEW YORK
{'•„ :•" EDITORS ONLINE DIRECTOR ART DIRECTOR Mark Frauenfelder WillKreth Georgia Rucker Carla Sinclair Gareth Branwyn RIVERHEAD BOOKS, NEW YORK CONTENTS 9 Foreword by Bruce Sterling Chapter 1: What Is a Happy Mutant? 12 Introduction 16 The Mr. Magoo Theory of Mutant Progress 17 Ribofunk: Life Is the Ultimate Happy Mutant 18 Happy Mutant Hall of Fame Ckciolina: The Little Fleshy One Theodore Geisei. Seuss I Am! Timothy Leary: Happy Mutant at Large Sun Ra: Saturnian Shaman of Sound Lady Lovelace: The Enchantress of Numbers William M. Gaines: The Worry-Free Madman Chapter 2: Reality Hacking 24 Introduction 26 Do-It-Yourself Radio & TV 29 Invasion of the Paper Smiles 30 A Guide to Personal Brand Names 34 Cold Shoulder (A Good OF Fashioned Phone Prank!) 36 So Many Bad Guys, So Little Time: The Guerrilla Art of Robbie Conal 38 Burning Man 40 Joey Skaggs 44 The Urban Absurdist Survival Kit™ 50 Craig Baldwin: Plagiarism Saves Time 52 Shenanigans in Cyberspace 54 How to Work at Work 55 Cacophony Society 56 Building Hackers 58 Hacking 60 Billboard Liberation Front 5 Chapter 3: Better Living Through Silicon 62 Introduction 64 Your.Name@Here: E-mail Identity Hacking 65 Net.Bozo Field Guide 71 Cyberspace for 25$ 72 Tom Jennings: Gardening in Cyberspace 74 Net.Weirdness 86 Freaks and Jim Ludtke 88 Digital Darwin 92 Digital Dodoes Chapter 4: Supreme Weirdos 96 Introduction 98 Journey to Kooktopia 104 How to Be a Supreme Weirdo 106 Lamprey Systems: Software That Sucks! 110 Patch Adams: Why Be Normal? 112 Are Fan Club Presidents Nuts? or The Tortured, Ridiculed, Unappreciated Life of a Fan Club President 118 Keane vs. -
2009 Annual Report
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES 2009 Annual Report VOLUME XIX NUMBER 3 Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century A Continuing Medical Education (CME) Conference with concurrent presentations in a non-CME track For physicians, medical & therapeutic professionals and the general public. April 15-18, 2010 • San Jose, California Presented by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Featuring presentations by: co-founder of transpersonal psychology Stanislav Grof, M.D. consciousness researcher & psychotherapist Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. visionary artists Alex and Allyson Grey founders of Erowid.org Earth and Fire Erowid pharmacologist & chemist Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, Ph.D. Psychedelic integrative medicine proponent Andrew Weil, M.D. Matt Baggott, Ph.D. Candidate, (UC Berkeley, LSD, MDMA, MDA, salvia divinorum researcher) Jose Carlos Bouso, Ph.D. Candidate (Spain, MDMA/PTSD researcher) SCIENCE Alicia Danforth, Ph.D. Candidate (ITP, UCLA psilocybin researcher) IN THE Rick Doblin, Ph.D. (executive director & founder of MAPS) Frank Echenhofer, Ph.D. (California Institute of Integral Studies) James Fadiman, Ph.D. (Institute of Transpersonal Psychology) Amanda Feilding, (Director of The Beckley Foundation) Twenty-first Peter Gasser, M.D. (Switzerland, LSD/end-of-life anxiety researcher) Neal Goldsmith, Ph.D. (author, psychotherapist) Roland Griffiths, Ph.D. (JHU, psilocybin/mystical experiences researcher) Century Charles Grob, M.D. (UCLA, psilocybin/cancer anxiety researcher) John Halpern, M.D. by video link (Harvard, neurocognitive consequences of ecstasy researcher) A Continuing Julie Holland, M.D. (NYU School of Medicine, psychiatric emergency services) Medical Sergio Marchevsky, M.D. (Israel, MDMA/PTSD researcher) John Mendelson, M.D. (CPMC RI, LSD, MDMA, MDA, salvia divinorum researcher) Education Michael Mithoefer, M.D.