Burning Man’s Gift-Driven, Event-Centred Diaspora

This text reports on an ongoing research on the processes of diasporization of the annual Burning Man festival by focusing on Europe. Driven by giving, which is the heart of its “Ten Principles”, Burning Man is, for a week in the Black Rock desert in Nevada (United States), the largest temporary city in the world with more than 65,000 participants in the last edition. A veritable social, cultural, political and religious laboratory, the participants attempt to export the principles and spirit of Burning Man to the outside world, in particular through regional events and initiatives that leave room for the proliferation of practices of Don. This phenomenon illustrates in particular how the current culture, and particularly the posterity of the counter-culture of the years 1960-70, evolves in the direction of an event culture (event-culture) which blurs the boundaries of “differentiated social spheres”, notably leisure, religion, politics, technology and culture. (FG)