Online Archive of University of Virginia Scholarship
Twenty-First Century American Ghost Hunting: A Late Modern Enchantment538 views
Author
Wise, Daniel, Religious Studies - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia
Advisors
Hedstrom, Matthew , Religious Studies, University of Virginia
Abstract
This dissertation uses twenty-first century American ghost hunting as a model for exploring enchantment in late modernity. It explores how ghost hunting's scientism, its empirical and experiential nature, its relationship to electronic media, and its relationship to a marketplace of spirituality reveal its modern nature and the ways in which it can shed light on what we can expect to find when we examine other late modern enchanted worldviews. The dissertation ultimately argues that, contrary to what Max Weber predicted, the modern world has not become disenchanted. Rather, through the interplay of disenchantment and re-enchantment, it has become differently enchanted.
Wise, Daniel. Twenty-First Century American Ghost Hunting: A Late Modern Enchantment. University of Virginia, Religious Studies - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, PHD (Doctor of Philosophy), 2020-11-24, https://doi.org/10.18130/v3-420c-x111.
