Experts in self-isolation? Monastic outreach during lockdown

Abstract

This paper draws on digital ethnography to examine the experience of a Catholic English Benedictine monastery in the context of restrictions on religious gatherings during the global COVID-19 pandemic. As the monks expand their digital presence and social media involvement, it is their experience of social withdrawal and apparent expertise in self-isolation that provides the grounding for their public engagement. While Max Weber depicts the monk as world-transcending ‘virtuoso’, in a time of lockdown this separation from the world provides a point of connection with the experience of wider society.

Rights

Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100814

Repository URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10023/24029