Hi Scott,
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Exciting about Duke! When do you hear back? What is the argument of the book?
All the best
Amy
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Hi Amy,
'"Hippies to the hot springs" is my argument in brief (and 45 years later still), and that "place," and the Harbin warm pool, inform/shape/give rise to Harbin's culture, if you will, which I characterize ethnographically as counterculture.
Here's my argument further re the virtual:
"I’m suggesting or arguing here for the authenticity of virtuality in this place-based, California, 1960s emergent counterculture at Harbin, where people find a sense of freedom thanks to its warm waters and milieu, especially when compared with bathtub soaking with virtual multimedia-informed immersive (Packer and Jordan 2000) Harbin experiences. Despite the potential and potency of the multimedia virtual, or of the virtual in the sense of ‘as if,’ the real, or actual, is more virtual than the virtual itself, I suggest, because reality or actuality at Harbin is transformed biologically by the clothing-optional, out-of-doors pool areas, especially the warm pool, via a kind of relaxation response or releasing action meditation, which as a whole (Harbin having begun as a Gestalt Center with hot springs, where gestalt can mean ‘whole’) has a far-reaching virtual or ‘as if’ effect on people’s body/minds" (page 19 of the manuscript).
It's been more than a month, so I'm hoping I'll hear from Duke University Press soon.
When will you finish your Ph.D. and when do you come back to the SF Bay Area?
TSWG meets this evening at Berkeley with Dean MacCannell talking - http://www.tourismstudies.
Nice to be in touch,
Scott
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