McCaffrey, Jessica (2012) Burning Man: Transforming Community through Countercultural Ritual Process. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
Preview |
Text (application/pdf)
1MBMccafffrrey_MA_S2013.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Spectrum Terms of Access. |
Abstract
This thesis will examine the countercultural event called Burning Man through the lens of the ritual process. Through the personal narratives of six main collaborators as well as my own ritual journey, I will outline how participation in countercultural social networks and events may lead to the creation of alternative moral practices which ultimately fuel the creation of communities. These communities do not organize according to conventional definitions of community and are often spontaneous and temporary. These spaces have been called Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ). TAZs allow participants to re-imagine and re-invent the rules for collective belonging and re-constitute what community is and how it is experienced. Many of my collaborators have stressed how important their Burning Man experience has been to the development of alternative moral practices. Burning Man, as an axis mundi of countercultural production and reproduction, can therefore be viewed as a pilgrimage which teaches initiates how to embrace countercultural moral practices in everyday life, these practices are embedded in new social movements whose aims are to revitalize cultural values through the lifeworlds of participants.
Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science |
---|---|
Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
Authors: | McCaffrey, Jessica |
Institution: | Concordia University |
Degree Name: | M.A. |
Program: | Social and Cultural Anthropology |
Date: | 12 September 2012 |
Thesis Supervisor(s): | Watson, Mark K. |
ID Code: | 977249 |
Deposited By: | JESSICA MCCAFFREY |
Deposited On: | 19 Jun 2013 16:27 |
Last Modified: | 18 Jan 2018 17:44 |
References:
Amit, Vered.2002. “Embracing Disjunction”. In The Trouble with Community: Anthropological
Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity. Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport
Eds. London: Pluto. Pp: 26-41.
2010. “Community as “Good to Think With”: The Productiveness of Strategic
Ambiguities” In Anthropologica. 52(2): 357-363.
Bakhtin, Mikhail.
1984. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Ben-Yehuda, Efrat.
2007. The Return of the Gift Society: Traditional Relations of Exchange and Trust in
Contemporary Technological Society. M.A. thesis, Cultural Anthropology, Simon
Frazer University.
Bonin, Olivier
2009. Dust and Illusions. 80 mins. Madnomad Films and Imagine.
Bowditch, Rachel.
2007. Fire, Ritual, Play, and Profit: Rehearsing Utopian Performance at Burning Man.
Ph.D. dissertation, Cultural Anthropology, New York University.
2010. On the Edge of Utopia. Calcutta, India: Seagull Books.
Bey, Hakim.
1985. T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic
Terrorism. Autonomedia.
Chen, Katherine Kang-Ning.
2004. The Burning Man Organization Grows Up: Blending Bureaucratic and
Alternative Structures. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, Harvard
University.
2005. “Incendiary Incentives: How the Burning Man Organization Motivates and
Manages Volunteers.” In AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man. Lee Gilmore and
Mark Van Proyen Eds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Pp: 109-128.
2009. Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization behind the Burning Man Event.
Chicago:The University of Chicago Press.
Clupper, Wendy.
2007. The Performance Culture of Burning Man. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of
Theatre, University of Maryland: College Park.
D’Andrea, Anthony.
2007. Global Nomads: Techno and New Age as Transnational Countercultures in Ibiza
and Goa. New York: Routledge.
de Certeau, Michel.
1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Duranti, Alessandro.
2010. “Husserl, Intersubjectivity and Anthropology.” In Anthropological Theory.
10(1):1-20.
Fortunati, Allegra.
2005. “Utopia, Social Sculpture, and Burning Man.” In AfterBurn: Reflections on
Burning Man. Lee Gilmore and Mark Van Proyen Eds. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press. Pp: 150-170.
Gilmore, Lee.
2005a. Theatre in a Crowded Fire: Spirituality, Ritualization, and Cultural
Perfomativity at The Burning Man Festival. Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate
Theological Union, California.
2005b. “Fires of the Heart: Ritual Pilgrimage and Transformation at Burning Man.” In
AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man. Lee Gilmore and Mark Van Proyen Eds.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Pp: 43-62.
2008. “Of Ordeals and Operas: Reflexive Ritualizing at the Burning Man Festival” In
Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance. Graham St John Ed.
Berghahn Books. Pp: 211-226.
2010. Theatre in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Habermas, Jürgen.
1987. The Theory of Communicative Action Volume 2 Lifeworld and System: A Critique
of Functionalist Reason. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hockett, Jeremy Todd.
2004. Reckoning Ritual and Counterculture in the Burning Man Community:
Communication, Ethnography, and the Self in Reflexive Modernism. Ph.D.
dissertation, Department of Philosophy, University of New Mexico.
2005. “Participant Observation and the Study of Self: Burning Man as Ethnographic
Experience.” In AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man. Lee Gilmore and Mark Van
Proyen Eds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Pp: 64-84.
Hoffman, Daniel and Steve Lubkemann.
2005. “Warscape Ethnography in West Africa and the Anthropology of "Events"”. In
Anthropological Quarterly 78(2):315-327.
Husserl, Edmund.
1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Trans. R.
Rojcewicz and A.Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Jackson, Michael.
1996. “Introduction: Phenomenology, Radical Empiricism, and Anthropological
Critique”. In Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological
Anthropology. Michael Jackson Ed. Indiana University Press. Pp: 1-50.
1998. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2005. Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies, and Effects. Berghahn Books.
Pike, Sarah M.
2001. Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for
Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Massey, Doreen.
1994. Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.\
Melucci, Alberto.
1989. Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in
Contemporary Society. John Keane and Paul Mier Eds. Hutchinson Radius.
Rossin, Andrea.
2010. Burning Man’s Cult of Flesh: Embodied Play(a) and the Affect of Physio
Emotive Residue on Ritual Patternings. M.A. thesis, Department of Religious
Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder.
Staggenborg, Suzanna.
2008. Social Movements. Oxford University Press Canada.
Stevens, Richard.
2003. Burning for the Other: Semiotics of Levinasian Theological Aesthetics in Light of
Burning Man. Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, California.
Stewart, Karen Ann
2010. In Dust We Trust: A Narrative into the Communal Heart of Public Art at the
Burning Man Festival. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Communication, Arizona
State University.
St John, Graham.
2008a. “Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance: An Introduction.” In
Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance. Graham St John, Ed.
Berghahn Books. Pp: 1-40.
2008b. “Trance Tribes and Dance Vibes.” In Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural
Performance. Graham St John, Ed. Berghahn Books. Pp: 149-173.
2009a. “12 Noon, Black Rock City”. In Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music
Culture. 1(1):127-136.
2009b. “Neotrance and the Psychedelic Festival” In Dancecult: Journal of Electronic
Dance Music Culture 1(1):35-64.
Sutton, David E.
2004. “Ritual, Continuity and Change: Greek Reflections. In History and Anthropology
15(2):91-105.
Turner, Victor.
1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Cornell University
Press.
1986. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications.
Turner, Victor and Edith Turner.
1978. Image and Pilgrimage inn Christian Culture. Columbia New York: Columbia
University Press.
Van Gennep, Arnold.
1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Van Proyen, Mark.
2005. “A Tale of Two Surrealities.” In AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man. Lee
Gilmore and Mark Van Proyen Eds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Pp: 172-193.
White, David Michael.
2001. Desertdreams. M.A. thesis, Theatre, Kansas City: University of Missouri.
Repository Staff Only: item control page