Paper Short Abstract:

A theorisation of fun, drawing from long term fieldwork in Northern Arizona learning flow arts, such as hooping, juggling, and fire spinning. With live demonstrations, this paper elaborates a phenomenology of fun, and evaluates some methodological problems from having too much fun in the field.

Paper Abstract:

During my fieldwork undertaken in Northern Arizona since 2012, I learned the practice of flow arts. A contemporary form of circus arts, using hoops, staffs, juggling balls and other props (or toys), flow arts were a common feature of the new age spiritual scene I studied in Sedona - and I had a lot of fun in the field. Enlivened with live demonstrations (space permitting) and video, this paper elaborates how flow arts can express and embody a phenomenology of fun. Using ethnographic accounts of fire spinners, people who incorporated fire into their flow, as well as my own experiences of learning how to spin, I theorise fun together with play, fire, and spirituality using Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on flow states and Alfred Gell's on art. Fun is contrasted to work (or labour) to consider its fuzzy boundaries. It will then be characterised as flow, another amorphous mood that emerges from spontaneous, consensual, even magical action. However, fun also needs limits, otherwise too much fun can become risky, even harmful, to participants. This theoretical work will lead to a consideration of some methodological concerns that the interiority of the practice produces. Having fun in the field imbricates assumptions about what constitutes ‘real ethnography’, which I analyse with reference to the historical problematisation of the ‘suffering subject’ in anthropology. However, accepting fun can inhere yet more problems, and the paper concludes by considering various critiques of flow arts and spirituality, such as appropriation, colonialist universalism, and co-occurrence with conspiracy theories.