Naked, Virtual Harbin: An Anthropology of Erotisme and the Touristic Imaginaire, Abstract, Public Talk at UC Berkeley about this on Friday, 11/2, from 5-7 in the Anthropology Department

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Naked, Virtual Harbin:

An Anthropology of Erotisme and the Touristic Imaginaire

Abstract

In this paper I present an ethnographic interpretation of Harbin Hot Springs in terms of the virtual, as well as the erotic, in the context of the information age, and in terms of an actual place. Harbin Hot Springs is a clothing-optional, New Age community and hot springs’ retreat center in northern California, which began in 1972 in its present form, and is my actual / virtual, ethnographic, field site, about which I’m writing a book, probably to be published next year, tentatively entitled something like "Naked Harbin: Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture & Clothing-Optional, Virtual Harbin." In this talk, I come into conversation with two approaches in tourism studies to examining the virtual, and the implications of the internet for this field, - both Dean MacCannell’s analysis in his paper “Virtual Reality’s Place”, as well as my own in a paper I wrote in Nelson Graburn’s class in 2001, entitled “Gazing at the Box: Tourism in the Context of the Internet and Globalization (Internetity)” (http://scottmacleod.com/anth250v.htm). In my talk here, virtuality primarily refers to something “not physically existing, but created by software to appear to do so,” and thus refers to forms of representation, both symbolic as well as what occurs in people’s bodyminds, thus in our imaginations, in this interpretation. By contrasting the actual with the virtual, through proposing the making of a virtual Harbin in a virtual world, as ethnographic field site for comparison with the actual, I suggest that we can engage participant observation as field method / pool play, in a novel and emergent approach in anthropology. By contrasting the term ‘Techne,’ -  roughly as 'making things with technologies,' - which centrally informs Tom Boellstorff’s argument in his “Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human” (Princeton 2008) with the term 'information' which is central to my concept of the virtual in my upcoming, “Naked Harbin” book, I privilege Harbin’s warm pool-informed milieu as generative of Harbin’s alternative- or counter-culture, and a kind of virtuality. The polysemic concept ‘culture,’ here as milieu / fluid code, is central to my interpretation of Harbin; Harbin's counterculture is a novel expression of the virtual at actual, on-the-ground Harbin. My thesis in this talk, ethnographically informed via field work which I’m exploring anew in terms of pool play vis-a-vis the significant, Harbin, warm pool, is that the serene, Harbin Hot Springs’ warm pool along with the clothing-optional pool area, as a whole, there, in particular, give rise to the relaxation response / meditation, plenty of naked soaking and cuddling over decades, a 1960’s informed, alternative milieu influencing sociality, and a kind of biological harmony, communitas and oneness, - all of which are an unique-to-Harbin, virtual experience, and which can be ethnographically examined in a virtual world Harbin in numerous unfolding ways. Residents and visitors to Harbin, each as kinds of tourists, and significantly hippy-informed, engage this Harbin experience, where the erotic permeates the pool area especially, and visitors greatly enjoy / revel in this imaginaire or milieu. 

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I'm giving a talk at UC Berkeley this Friday from 5-7 in the Gifford Room in the Anthropology Department, Kroeber Hall, at the south side of campus, across from

Cafe Strada, if you or anyone would like to hear it ...  http://tourismstudies.org/Colloquia_2012-2013.htm.

Friday, November 2, 5:00 PM
Gifford Room, 221 Kroeber Hall
University of California, Berkeley

http://tourismstudies.org/news_archive/MacLeod2012.htm

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Some relevant blog entries:

Naked, Virtual Harbin: An Anthropology of Erotisme and the Touristic Imaginaire, Abstract, Public Talk at UC Berkeley about this on Friday, 11/2/12, from 5-7 in the Anthropology Department

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2012/10/naked-virtual-harbin-anthropology-of.html



Titan Arum: Complete UC Berkeley Tourism Studies' talk in the Anthropology Department - "Naked, Virtual Harbin," The abstract for the talk is in a 6 minute separate video, Both are accessible at my YouTube video channel here - http://www.youtube.com/helianth, Upcoming actual / virtual Harbin Ethnographic book information to appear here - http://scottmacleod.com/HarbinHotSpringsEthnography.htm (not yet posted)


http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2012/11/titan-arum-complete-uc-berkeley-tourism.html

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