Donnerstag, 1. Mai 2008
In Sachen Wissenschaftskommunikation: Drei Artikel des Heidelberger SFB-Internet-Forschungsprojekts online erschienen
Es ist ein bisschen Eigenwerbung: Gerade sehe ich, dass Vit Sisler, der an der Prager Karls-Universität zu Islamischem Recht im Cyberpace arbeitet, auf seiner Website Digital Islam drei Artikel online gestellt hat, die meine beiden Kolleginnen und ich anläßlich der Tagung Cyberspace in Brno (Tschechien) im Jahr 2006 als Paper eingereicht hatten und die 2007 im “Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology” in Print erschienen.
Vit Sisler organisierte damals das noch *sehr* kleine Panel “Religious Norms in Cyberspace”. - Wir waren eine kleine Gruppe gegenüber einer Übermacht vor allem juristischer Beiträge. :)
Zwar hat keiner unserer drei Artikel etwas mit Islam zu tun, sondern sie bedienen sich thematisch vorwiegend bzw. in meinem Beitrag, der sich mit Ritualen der sog. “Emerging Church” befasst, dezidiert christlicher Quellen, aber alle unsere Aufsätze beschäftigen sich mit methodischen und methodologischen Fragen kultur- und religionswissenschaftlicher Internetforschung. - Ein Punkt, um den es auch bei Digital Islam geht.
Es handelt sich dabei im Einzelnen um folgende Aufsätze (Titel + Kurzabstract):
- Kerstin Radde-Antweiler: Cyber-Rituals in Virtual Worlds. Wedding Online in Second Life.
In the context of Internet Research, Virtual Worlds offer a new environment to meet, communicate and perform rituals - the so called Online-Rituals - in a virtual reality, irrespective of geographical and real-life body conditions. The most prominent example for such worlds that have existed since 1998 is the privately-owned, subscription-based 3D application Second Life. An increasing number of residents use this World not only as a kind of virtual playground but as an enlargement of their real-life possibilities that has to be taken seriously: The users are both socially and religiously very active and consequently transfer real-life activities and therefore also rituals into virtual space. With the shift of technical boundaries former seeminlgy fixed religious and ritual frameworks will be modified and transformed. Different wedding rituals designed and performed in Second Life, for example, show the possibility to identify processes of ritual transfer and of ritual patchworking.
Within the field of the new media, the Internet is recognised by a growing number of researchers both as source and tool for examining and analysing religions and religious activities. Today a wide range of religious rituals is crossing the border from the offline to the online realm. On personal homepages as well as on institutional websites (e.g. churches) one can find classical ritual texts, different descriptions of rituals and a lot of ritual prescripts, which together inform or guide the user in ritual behaviour. It becomes evident that by the change of media the rituals as well as the religions as a whole undergo certain processes of change, adaptation and innovation. On webpages containing Rituals Online, a wide range of highly complex transfer and design processes take place which affect the planning and accomplishment of religiousness and religious performance on the Internet. Besides tracing the different patterns and structures of these processes, one also has to think about the new theoretical and methodological challenges the researchers in Religious and Ritual Studies are confronted with since the Internet offers a new and nearly boundless field and space for academic study.
- Simone Heidbrink: Exploring the Frameworks of the Digital Realm. Offline-Online-Offline Transfers of Ritual Performance.
Looking at the constantly growing field of religion online, the shifts in and the new definition of religious frameworks become an increasingly important topic. In the field of religious rituals, it is not only the participant, location and conduction of the ritual that is affected by this shift; also the researchers have to overthrow their former theologically resp. systemic based definition of religiousness and spirituality due to the fact that on the Internet, religion is defined and realized in a completely different way by its participants. This is true even in the field of Christianity as the example of a ritual created by some British „Emerging Church“ groups shows. These loosely defined groups which span all denominational borders of the Christian spectrum have been established since the late 1980s mainly in the UK in order to organize church services they refer to as „Alternative Worship“. The Internet plays an important role as a platform of communication and (self-)organization of the members and as technically and aesthetically challenging means of (re)presentation. Some events that were conducted in real life, like the multimedia labyrinth installation in St Paul`s cathedral in 2000, have even been „reconstructed“ in virtual space , generating a new form of worship. Interestingly but not unexpectedly, these transfer processes entail consequences for spirituality in real life. What exactly happens during the transfer into the digital realm? What are the interdependencies between offline and online and how do they affect worship and worshippers? These questions will be followed, employing the results and ideas of modern Ritual and Religious Studies, sheding light on a new field of (post)modern Christianity.
Vielleicht erreichen die Artikel ja durch die Online-Publikation ein größeres Publikum(?).
Das wäre schön, denn Wissenschaft (und das gilt zum mindesten für die Kulturwissenschaften) ist und bleibt ihrem Wesen nach Kommunikation. Und was wäre Forschung ohne Kritik / Anregungen / Lob / Verbesserungsvorschläge / … oder ein wie auch immer geartetes Feedback?
Deshalb mag ich das Bloggen. Auch wenn es nicht wirklich gut (oder vielleicht sogar eher schlecht?) für die Vita ist.
