Network Apocalypsis
Revealing and Reveling at a New Age Festival
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.v5i2.26232Keywords:
virtual/IRL, spiritual presence, web of mediated interaction, New Age, ideology of intention, Maya calendar, blended geographiesAbstract
This article analyzes the Synthesis 2012 festival, which coincided with the end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012. The festival was held in and around the village of Pisté in Yucatán, Mexico, and broadcast live via a web-based video stream. We gathered ethnographic data about the event both onsite and via the Internet. Presenting and analyzing that data here, we consider the way that these two different modes of access to the ethnographic event(s) reveal and obscure different dimensions of participants’ presence at the festival.
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Bauman, Zygmunt. 2003. Liquid Love: on the frailty of human bonds. Cambridge: Polity
Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Campbell, Heidi. 2005. Exploring religious community online: We are one in the network (Vol. 24). Bern: Peter Lang
Chayko, Mary. 2008. Portable communities: the social dynamics of online and mobile connectedness. Albany: State University of New York Press
Coats, Curtis. 2011. “The melodramatic structure of new age tourist desire.” Tourist Studies 11(3): 197–213. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468797611432037
Coleman, Simon and Mike Crang, eds. 2002. Tourism: between place and performance. New York: Berghahn Books.
Crouch, David, Rhona Jackson and Felix Thompson, eds. 2005. The Media and the Tourist Imagination: Converging Cultures. New York: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203389935
Digance, Justine. 2005. “Religious and secular pilgrimage: journeys redolent with meaning.” In Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, edited by Dallen J. Timothy and Daniel H. Olsen, 36–48. New York: Routledge.
Ehn, Billy and Löfgren, Orvar. 2010. The Secret World of Doing Nothing. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Elliott, Anthony and John Urry. 2010. Mobile Lives. New York: Routledge.
Engelke, Matthew. 2007. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Heelas, Paul. 2008. Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444301106
Helland, Christopher. 2007. “Diaspora on the electronic frontier: Developing virtual connections with sacred homelands.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(3): 956–976. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00358.x
Hill-Smith, Connie. 2009. “Cyberpilgrimage: A study of authenticity, presence, and meaning in online pilgrimage experiences.” The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 21(2): 6. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.21.2.006
2011. “Cyber-Pilgrimage: The (Virtual) Reality of Online Pilgrimage Experience.” Religion Compass 5/6: 236–246. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00277.x
Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture. New York: New York University Press.
Lan, Kimberly. 2000. New Age Capitalism: Making Money East of Eden. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Miller, Daniel. 2011. Tales from Facebook. Cambridge: Polity
Minca, Claudio and Tim Oakes. 2006. “Introduction: Traveling paradoxes.” In Travels in Paradox: Remapping Tourism, edited by Claudio Minca and Tim Oakes, 1–22. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Molz, Jennie Germann. 2012. Travel Connections: tourism, technology and togetherness in a mobile world. New York: Routledge.
Mugerauer, Robert. 2001. “Openings to each other in the technological age.” In Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage: Global Norms and Urban Forms in the Age of Tourism, edited by Nezar Alsayyad, 90–110. New York: Routledge
Norman, Alex. 2012. “The varieties of spiritual tourist experience.” Literature and Aesthetics 22(1): 20–37.
Pinchbeck, Daniel. 2007. 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. New York: Penguin
Rountree, Kathryn. 2006. “Journeys to the goddess: Pilgrimage and tourism in the New Age.” In On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity, edited by William Swatos, Jr., 33–60. Boston, MA: Brill
Sutcliffe, Steven. 2003. Children of the New Age: a history of spiritual practices. New York: Routledge
Swatos, Jr., William. 2006. “For Charles and for England: Pilgrimage without tourism.” In On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity, edited by William Swatos, Jr., 1–31. Boston, MA: Brill.
Urry, John and Jonas Larsen. 2011. The Tourist Gaze 3.0. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446251904
Vukonic, Boris. 1996. Tourism and Religion. Translated by Sanja Matesic. New York: Pergamon.
Wyld, David. 2010. “The virtual tourist: Using the virtual world to promote the real one.” Advances in Competitiveness Research 18(1/2): 111–120.
York, Michael. 2005. “Contemporary pagan pilgrimages.” In From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety, edited by William H. Swatos, Jr. and Tomasi Luigi, 137–158. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Published
2015-03-10
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Coats, C., & Murchison, J. (2015). Network Apocalypsis: Revealing and Reveling at a New Age Festival. International Journal for the Study of New Religions, 5(2), 167–188. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.v5i2.26232
