Rave Culture and Religion

The collection provides insights on developments in post-traditional religiosity (especially 'New Age' and 'Neo-Paganism') through studies of rave's Gnostic narratives of ascensionism and re-enchantment, explorations of the embodied spirituality and millennialist predispositions of dance culture, and investigations of transnational digital-art countercultures manifesting at geographic locations as diverse as Goa, India, and Nevada's Burning Man festival. Contributors examine raving as a new religious or revitalization movement; a powerful locus of sacrifice and transgression; a lived bodily experience; a practice comparable with world entheogenic rituals; and as evidencing a new Orientalism. Rave Culture and Religion will be essential reading for advanced students and academics in the fields of sociology, cultural studies and religious studies.

Graham St John is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Interactive Media and Production at the University of Regina, and a Research Associate at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, Universoty of Queensland. His book Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures will be published with Equinox in September 2009. His previous publications include the edited collection Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance (Berghahn 2008).