%0 Journal Article
%T Civilised Tribalism: Burning Man, Event
%A Graham St John
%J Cultural Sociology
%@ 1749-9763
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1749975517733162
%X Otherwise known as Black Rock City, Burning Man is an artistic event, that, mounted annually in Nevada¡¯s Black Rock Desert, has become the inspiration for a global cultural movement. While it has been the subject of considerable attention from ethnographers and sociologists, Burning Man has persistently resisted classification. In this article, I undertake a tentative approach to Burning Man via a concept integral to Maffesoli¡¯s postmodern social philosophy popular within Anglophone sociology: the neo-tribe. Ethnographic attention to Burning Man illustrates spectacular aspects of neo-tribalism. It is cyclical, immediate, sensual, enchanted, collaborative and offers multiple sites of belonging for participants, many of whom will self-identify as ¡®tribal¡¯ or ¡®neo-tribal¡¯. And yet Burning Man is also demonstrative of an optimising modernist ¡®project¡¯ complicating, if not incongruent with, postmodern tribalism. With Black Rock City theme camps, art projects and build teams echoing a design-orientated maker culture, and an organisation ¨C the Burning Man Project ¨C dedicated to propagating and scaling (making) the ethical, civic and progressive dimensions of this culture, this article demonstrates the paradoxical proclivities of Burning Man¡¯s tribal character. The objective of the article is to forge a fuller understanding of Burning Man and other ¡®transformational¡¯ events illustrative of an alternative tribalism, and to explore ways the phenomenon both approximates and deviates from Maffesoli¡¯s thesis
%K Burning Man
%K cultural movement
%K festivals
%K makers
%K neo-tribe
%K subculture
%K Maffesoli
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1749975517733162