White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals
Cover Image: Shellie White Light, Bhakti Fest, 2014, photo credit: Amanda Lucia.
White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals
Recently featured in: Sacred Matters Magazine, Canopy Forum, UC Press blog, The Yogic Studies podcast, New Books in Indian Religions podcast, Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Workshop, Greetings from Somewhere podcast, Burner podcast, and Spirit Matters podcast
Reviewed in High Country News , Ethnic and Racial Studies, Critical Research on Religion, Reading Religion (Journal of the American Academy of Religion), Journal of Contemporary Religion, Nova Religio, Religious Studies Review, and Religion Watch
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In recent years, events like Burning Man, Bhakti Fest, Wanderlust, and Lightning in a Bottle have become increasingly popular, attracting thousands of attendees to sites across the United States. In this book, I seek to understand these festivals’ complicated, often contradictory relationships with race. Although there is considerable research into New Age religion, no other study has addressed its overwhelming whiteness. An engrossing ethnography of spiritual practices in transformational festivals, White Utopias argues that there is a productive tension at the heart of such events. They are alternative religious institutions for “spiritual but not religious” communities, genuinely encouraging mutual care and personal growth. At the same time, their religious exoticism hinders them from achieving the forms of community and liberation that many participants desire, an obstacle that renders them gated white utopias. Paying particular attention to yoga’s role in disseminating values, this book offers new ways of comprehending—and perhaps intervening in—transformational festivals as significant cultural phenomena.
"Lucia’s sharp analysis and enthusiasm for historical and theoretical context dominates the book." High Country News
“White Utopias is a vivid ethnography of the overwhelming whiteness of transformative festivals and yogic retreats. Amanda J. Lucia lays bare the structural racism undergirding the moral goal of self-development, essential to participation in these communities. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in religion and spirituality, and the convoluted links between the two.” Tulasi Srinivas, author of The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder
“This scrupulous interrogation into white spiritual festivals illustrates how a utopian vision, rooted in a commitment to personal and social transformation, holds these communities together. White Utopias enters many live fields in the study of religion, including spirituality, globalism, capitalism, and race, especially the theorization of whiteness with brilliant analytical acumen.” Andrea R. Jain, author of Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality
“This book is a wonderfully rich and intimate ethnographic study of transformational festivals as well as a powerful critique of the white privilege that permeates them. Lucia deftly explores how the complex dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in these countercultural spaces inflect their utopian aspirations. White Utopias is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the contemporary spiritual landscape.” Sarah M. Pike, author of For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism
White Utopias was an amazing project that took me all over the world to yoga, spiritual, and transformational festivals between 2011 and 2019. I met incredible people who shared their lives and stories with me, and for that and I am forever grateful.
In addition to the book, I published the following related articles:
Lucia, Amanda. “Aligning the Good and the Beautiful: Yogic Aesthetics in a Globalized World,” In Embodied Reception, edited by Henriette Hanky, Istvan Keul and Knut A. Jacobsen, in press.
Lucia, Amanda. 2023. “Marking Sacred Space: Altars and Yoga Mats in Transformative Events.” Journal of Festive Studies, Vol. 5: 110—130. https://doi.org/10.33823/jfs.2023.5.1.114
Lucia, Amanda and Michael Alexander. 2021. “Aum Shalom: Jews, Gurus, and Religious Hybridity in the City of Angels.” pp.189-203 in Religion in Los Angeles: Religious Activism, Innovation, and Diversity in the Global City, edited by Richard Flory and Diane Winston. New York: Routledge University Press.
Lucia, Amanda. 2020. “Why are Yogic and Transformational Festivals – from Wanderlust to Burning Man – So White?” UC Press Blog. November 25. https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/53445/why-are-yogic-and-transformational-festivals-from-wanderlust-to-burning-man-so-white
Lucia, Amanda. 2020. “Religious Exoticism and White Utopias: 7 Questions for Amanda J. Lucia,” Sacred Matters: Religious Currents in Culture. November 1. https://sacredmattersmagazine.com/religious-exoticism-and-white-utopias-7-questions-for-amanda-j-lucia
Lucia, Amanda. 2020. “Representation and Whiteness among the ‘Spiritual but not Religious.’” Canopy Forum: On the Interactions of Law and Religion. September 24.
Lucia, Amanda. 2018. “Saving Yogis: Spiritual Nationalism and the Proselytizing Missions of Global Yoga.” pp. 35-70 in Asian Migrations & Global Religion: Studies on Transnational Religious Movements, edited by Brenda Yeoh and Bernardo Brown, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Lucia, Amanda. 2016. “Festivals.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Hinduism, edited by Tracy Coleman, November 28. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com
I’ve also given the following related public talks:
RACE AND NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY
2024. TBD, California State University-Northridge (April 23)
2023. Panel with Arun Saldanha. “Awakening the Third Eye: Hierarchies of Consciousness in the New Age,” Harvard University (October 26)
2022. Keynote, “Denaturalizing White Women’s Agency in Alternative Spiritualities,” Ghent University (December 8)
White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals
2022. Book Talk and Class Discussion, University of Notre Dame (November 15).
2022. Keynote, “Returning to the Roots of White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals,” Yoga Darśana, Yoga Sādhana (YDYS), Jagiellonian University, Kraków (May 18).
2022 “Returning to the Roots of White Utopias,” Colloquium, University of Edinburgh (March 23).
2022 “The Materiality of Religious Exoticism: Re-reading White Utopias through Objects,” Occidental College (February 23).
2021. Book Talk and Class Discussion, Skidmore College (December 3).
2021. Keynote, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK (September 15).
2021. Book Talk and Class Discussion, Eckerd College (April 23).
2021. Book Talk and Class Discussion, Indiana University (April 13).
2021. Book Talk and Class Discussion, Elon University (March 24).
2021. Book Talk at Cellar Door, Riverside, CA (February 19).
2021. Book Talk at Open Book Sessions, Seattle, WA (February 9).
2020. Colloquium. Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA (October 7).
2020. Ratner Family Lecture, Keynote, Case Western Reserve University (March 4).
2019. Keynote, Yogascapes 2.0, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan (July 11).
2020. “In Conversation: Michael Alexander on Making Peace with the Universe (2020) and Amanda Lucia on White Utopias (2020).” Center for Ideas and Society, UCR (November 17).
2014. “Seeking the Sacred: Transformational Festivals and the Search for Spiritual Experience,” Indiana University-Bloomington.
“Romanticizing the Premodern: Yoga, Spirituality, and the Practice of Exoticism,” (Ch. 1)
2021. Yadunandan Center for India Studies, California State University-Long Beach (March 24).
2020. SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies, University of London (December 2).
2017. Colloquium. Middlebury College.
2018. “Box Braids, Buddhist Altars, and Native Headdresses: Radical Self Expression vs. Cultural Property at Burning Man,” Burning Man and Transformational Event Cultures Symposium, University of Fribourg, Switzerland (November 29-20).
“Representing Yoga: A Book Talk on White Utopias with Amanda Lucia,” (Ch. 2)
2020. Webinar. Yoga Alliance (November 12). “Anxieties over Authenticity: American Yoga and the Problem of Whiteness,”
2018. Keynote. California State University-Bakersfield (May 4).
2018. Keynote. University Club, Claremont, CA (June 29).
2015. “Modern Postural Yoga through Multiple Lenses,” Dueling Disciplines: Critical Dance Studies, Religious Studies, and Political Theory, Center for Ideas and Society, UCR
2014. “The Yoga of Antiquity: American Yoga and Authenticity,” Colloquium. Dance Department, UCR.
“Between Asceticism and Mysticism: Spiritual Yogis in the Festival Scene,” (Chs. 3 & 4)
2020. New Directions in Yoga Studies: Online Weekend School for the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Oxford University. (December 6).
“The Cathartic Freedom of Transformational Festival: Escapes and Entrapments of Neoliberal Modernity,” (Ch. 5)
2018. Colloquium. UCR (October 4).
2017. “Illusions of Freedom: Escapism, Exoticism and the Neoliberal Yogi,” Colloquium. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
“Saving Yogis: Spiritual Nationalism and the Proselytizing Missions of Global Yoga”
2020. Article Talk and Class Discussion. Otterbein University. (November 11).
2015. Migrant Communities and Religious Experience in Asia Conference, Asia Research Institute (ARI), Singapore.
Photo credits: Top right: Wanderlust, Stratton, VT, 2018 (photo credit, Chris Eckhart, copyright, Wanderlust); Third row left: kīrtan artists at Prasada Festival, 2018 (photo credit, Jennifer Mazzucco); Third row left: Wanderlust, Squaw Valley, 2019 (photo credit, Ali Kaukas, copyright, Wanderlust); Bottom row middle: The Galaxia Temple goes up in flames, Burning Man, 2018 (photo credit, Scott London); all other photo credits: Amanda Lucia.