Burning Man And Research Topics

Research usually makes dry reading. Then there's this stuff:

Where some see feminist freedom in the topless bike ride, researcher Wendy Clupper saw a dissertation. Watching the same parade eight years earlier, she couldn't help noticing the dichotomy between female empowerment and male lust.

Her paper, "The Performance Culture of Burning Man," earned Clupper a doctoral degree in performance arts from the University of Maryland. Since then her essays on Burning Man have been reprinted in two books, including an analysis of the bike ride that Neko found so exhilarating.

That puts Clupper among a growing list of sociologists, business professors, theologians and other scholars who view the event's mix of hipsters, artisans, zany theme camps and outdoor art gallery as more than a party. They see fertile ground for research.

...For Cal State Northridge religion and anthropology teacher Lee Gilmore, the draw was the spiritual nature of the festival. In her new book, "Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man," Gilmore explores the rituals, elaborate costumes, temples and fires of Burning Man and asks why the festival sometimes "smells like religion."

...Clupper's decision to use Burning Man for her studies was easy, she said.

"You'd never see this much art in a gallery. You'd be hard-pressed to find this many artisans in any performance space in the world," said Clupper, who runs an avant-garde theater in San Francisco. "And yet you can come to one place and be inundated by it for one week."

...Festival-goers are encouraged to be "radically self-reliant," bringing in everything needed to survive the harsh desert climate and then leaving without a trace. They observe a "gift economy," sharing food, cocktails, back rubs, even solar showers. Commerce is not allowed, except sales of ice and coffee. There's no advertising, and admission is $300, whether for a day or a week.

...One professor concluded that Burning Man is an "organizational mutant," not quite a business or a nonprofit, that has found a way to stage an anything-goes festival that is both highly organized and financially self-sustaining.

...Chen, the sociologist, said it was neither too hierarchical nor too loose in structure. Ideas come from its large volunteer ranks or from participants, who then find the muscle and cash to make it work (a recycling camp came about this way). Besides providing infrastructure, the festival's small, year-round staff offers grants for large artworks and coordinates off-site projects, such as Burners Without Borders, a nonprofit that helps out in disasters.

Chen's 2009 book, "Enabling Creative Chaos," looks at the event's success in detail.

"You have volunteers ranging from followers of punk-rock circuses to scientists working for NASA," she said. "They like the freedom of finding their place instead of being told what to do."

To Gilmore, the Cal State Northridge lecturer, the festival is an ideal laboratory for exploring the nature of religion. Burning Man, she said, shows how spiritual feelings emerge in settings not typically defined as religious.

Many "burners" — as regulars are known — view the week-ending ritual of torching the effigy as a deeply meaningful climax. A temple that is built each year for people to leave notes for lost ones, and then ritually burned, can also be viewed in a religious light, she said.