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Finding Liquid Salvation: Using the Cardean Ethnographic Method to Document Second Life Residents and Religious Cloud Communities

Finding Liquid Salvation: Using the Cardean Ethnographic Method to Document Second Life Residents and Religious Cloud Communities

Gregory Price Grieve, Kevin Heston
Copyright: © 2012 |Pages: 18
ISBN13: 9781609608545|ISBN10: 1609608542|EISBN13: 9781609608552
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-854-5.ch019
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MLA

Grieve, Gregory Price, and Kevin Heston. "Finding Liquid Salvation: Using the Cardean Ethnographic Method to Document Second Life Residents and Religious Cloud Communities." Virtual Worlds and Metaverse Platforms: New Communication and Identity Paradigms, edited by Nelson Zagalo, et al., IGI Global, 2012, pp. 288-305. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60960-854-5.ch019

APA

Grieve, G. P. & Heston, K. (2012). Finding Liquid Salvation: Using the Cardean Ethnographic Method to Document Second Life Residents and Religious Cloud Communities. In N. Zagalo, L. Morgado, & A. Boa-Ventura (Eds.), Virtual Worlds and Metaverse Platforms: New Communication and Identity Paradigms (pp. 288-305). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60960-854-5.ch019

Chicago

Grieve, Gregory Price, and Kevin Heston. "Finding Liquid Salvation: Using the Cardean Ethnographic Method to Document Second Life Residents and Religious Cloud Communities." In Virtual Worlds and Metaverse Platforms: New Communication and Identity Paradigms, edited by Nelson Zagalo, Leonel Morgado, and Ana Boa-Ventura, 288-305. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2012. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60960-854-5.ch019

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Abstract

The Cardean Ethnographic Method was developed between 2007 and 2010 to study religious communities in the virtual world of Second Life. In our research, we faced a two-sided methodological problem. We had to theorize the virtual and its relation to the actual, while simultaneously creating practices for an effective ethnographic method. Our solution, named after the Roman goddess of the hinge, Cardea, theorizes the “virtual” as desubstantialized and nondualistic; “residents” as fluid, multiple, and distributed cyborg-bodies; and “cloud communities” as temporary, outsourced groups of emotionally bonded residents. These three qualities enable a classic form of ethnography based on participant observation, which is possible on Second Life because the platform enables immersion, a prolonged time in the field, as well as the bodily practices necessary for thick description. The Cardean method unveils online religion operating as “Liquid Salvation”—which is defined by consumerism, radical individualism, and pragmatic religious practice.

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