Religion, Digitality, and Ethnography

In this article, I examine how I utilize a collection of "skillful means” informed by Buddhism, namely a collection of practices encompassing reflexive choices and decisions, positioning, and creativities that are situationally tailored for and derived from interacting with Chinese Buddhist diasporas in French Canada in the context of digital social media throughout my digital fieldwork. I use ethnographic vignettes to illustrate how these practices, afforded by the Buddhist ideas, digital possibilities, and ethnographic reflexivity, are crucial to constantly navigate, negotiate, and devise new strategies for pinpointing digital field sites and conducting participant observation. More importantly, I highlight the digital affordances one could leverage as both a researcher and a practitioner to actively build visibility and voices in the researched digital communities. I further reflect on how these dynamics can uniquely affect the researched individuals and communities. Finally, I point out the caveats and pitfalls this approach can bring.

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the board game CULTivate and the video game Cult of the Lamb. In it, I focus on their gameplay and mechanics (e.g., the actions a player may take) to decode how these games have implicit theories of what cults are and how cults work. It situates these games and their implicit theories within recent debates on the rhetoric of cults and their representation in popular media. This paper concludes with suggestions about research at the intersection of Religious Studies and Game Studies with a focus on the design and experience of game mechanics.