Browsing by Author "Raskinen, Mikko"

In this research I'll find out if a space existing in a virtual world can be considered sacred - in a similar way as sacred spaces in the physical world like mosques, temples or churches. Also, I will map the premises from which sacredness of these virtual manifestations are possible. The analysis is based on Professor Veikko Anttonen's theory of the sacred as a border. The main categories framing my research are themes of territoriality, and the body, through which I will view both the borders marking sacred spaces, and the rules to cross them set for the body. The subject of my research is the Second Life virtual world. Here my focus is on three different representations of three religions and the virtual areas built by them to Second Life: Islam, Wicca and the Anglican Church. The OnIslam Virtual Hajj area simulates the pilgrimage to the Mecca, Sacred Cauldron area includes for example a virtual Stonehenge, and the Anglican Cathedral area has a built in virtual cathedral. Methodically my research is in the tradition of qualitative research, where I combine virtual ethnography (observant based field research in a virtual environment) and also questionnaires and interviews from the users of these areas. The results indicate that the question of virtual space as sacred depends both on the religion in question, and the point of view of analysis. Viewed from the researchers "etic" point of view, all three religions can be considered satisfying the characteristics set by Veikko Anttonen's theory of sacred. Viewed from the users' own "emic" point of view, only Wicca and the Anglican Church were open to the idea of virtual space as sacred, whereas users representing Islam do not consider the virtual version of Mecca as sacred. However, in the virtual Islam area there exists a conflict where the users have despite this resistance marked their space of the virtual Mecca as explicitly sacred, for example with signs. On the level of Jean Baudrillards theory of Simulation, Wicca goes furthest in disengaging from its physical world representations of the sacred. Apart from the virtual copy of the Stonehenge, the temples in the Wicca's Sacred Cauldron area are detached from their connections to any equivalents in the physical world - unlike the virtual version of Mecca which is constantly compared with its physical model and through which the dialogue on sacredness is engaged. Also the cathedral in the Anglican Cathedral area is separated from the physical towards Baudrillard's Simulation, by not being a copy of any specific cathedral. This separation from sacred "role models" does not however in the cases of Wicca and Anglican Cathedral diminish these objects from being considered as sacred.