Synopses & Reviews
Millions of users have taken up residence in virtual worlds, and in those worlds they find opportunities to revisit and rewrite their religious lives. Robert Geraci argues that virtual worlds and video games have become a locus for the satisfaction of religious needs, providing many users with communities, a meaningful experience of history and human activity, and a sense of transcendence. Using interviews, surveys, and his own first-hand experience within the games, Geraci shows how
World of Warcraft and
Second Life provide participants with the opportunity to rethink what it means to be religious in the contemporary world.
Virtually Sacred follows the religious paths of cyberspace, articulating both theoretical understandings of digital religion and the lived experience of virtual world residents. Using sociological methods, the book explores how users set cyberspace apart from daily life and thus incline toward religious participation within it. After engaging a general trend of sacred expectations for living in cyberspace, Geraci follows the shift from religion as practiced in the 1990s Internet explosion to religion as practiced in virtual worlds. At times, he shows, virtual worlds like World of Warcraft operate as direct competitors to traditional religious institutions. Second Life, on the other hand, can do this but it can also provide new ways of practicing traditional religions. The book concludes by analyzing the patterns observable in virtual world religiosity and exploring the relevance of those patterns for academic and daily life.
Review
"Robert Geraci's astute argument that video gamers discover enchantment, redemption, and transcendence in gaming deserves widespread attention. Virtually Sacred is one of the most original treatments of gaming and participation in virtual worlds I have ever read. The elegant, understated prose provides the perfect foil for Geraci's unexpected, provocative foray into grasping the contours of religiosity in gaming and virtual worlds." --Bonnie Nardi, Professor at University of California, Irvine, and author of My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft
"This lucid but sophisticated book demonstrates that online virtual realities like World of Warcraft and Second Life allow the sacred to flourish in a secular society, encourage players to experiment with ethical issues, sustain community in an age when tribe is an obsolete concept, and offer not merely escape but transcendence." --William Sims Bainbridge, author of The Warcraft Civilization and eGods
"In Virtually Sacred, Robert Geraci argues that 'virtual worlds are now rearranging or replacing religious practice', competing with traditional religions and their stories in a new spiritual marketplace. This provocative book represents a major empirical and theoretical step forward for the study of digital religion, engaging seriously and thoughtfully with the history of religions, virtual anthropology and actor-network theory, and will make an essential contribution to the next generation of debates in the field of religion, media, and culture." --Tim Hutchings, CODEC, St. John 's College, Durham University
About the Author
Robert M. Geraci is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Manhattan College. He is the author of
Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality and many essays that analyze the ways in which human beings use technology to make the world meaningful. He was the principle investigator on a National Science Foundation grant to study virtual worlds and the recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Award (2012-2013), which allowed him to investigate the intersections of religion and technology at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Real Stories in Virtual Worlds
1) A Cultural Adventure
2) Polite Society
3) A World with Meaning
4) The Flow of Faith Online
5) Another Life for Religion
6) Sacred Second Lives
7) Reassembling Religion
Appendix: On Method in the Study of Virtual Worlds
References
Notes
Index