@mastersthesis {1197,
	title = {Gender, Faith, and Storytelling: An Ethnography of the Charismatic Internet},
	volume = {Ph.D.},
	year = {2012},
	school = {University of Sussex},
	type = {Doctoral Thesis},
	abstract = {Although early predictions that an emerging {\textquoteleft}cyberspace{\textquoteright} could exist in separation from 
offline life have been largely discarded, anthropological studies of the internet have 
continued to find notions of {\textquoteleft}virtual reality{\textquoteright} relevant as individuals use these 
technologies to fulfil the {\textquotedblleft}pledges they have already made{\textquotedblright} (Boellstorff, 2008; Miller \& 
Slater, 2001: 19) about their own selfhood and their place in the world. There are 
parallels between this concept of {\textquoteleft}virtual reality{\textquoteright} and the on-going spiritual labour of 
Charismatic Christians in the UK, who seek in the context of a secularising nation to 
maintain a sense of presence in the {\textquotedblleft}coming Kingdom{\textquotedblright} of God. The everyday 
production of this expanded spiritual context depends to a large extend on verbal genres 
that are highly gendered. For women, declarations of faith are often tied to domestic 
settings, personal narratives, and the unspoken testimony of daily life (e.g. Lawless, 
1988; Griffith, 1997). The technologies of the internet, whose emerging genres 
challenge boundaries between personal and social, public and private, can cast a greater 
illumination on this inward-focused labour. This doctoral thesis is based on 
ethnographic research in four Charismatic Evangelical congregations and examination 
of the online practices of churchgoers. I have found that the use of the internet by 
Charismatic Christian women fits with wider religious preoccupations and patterns of ritual practice. Words posted through Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and other online 
platforms come to resemble in their form as well as their content Christian narratives of 
a life with meaning.},
	keywords = {anthropological studies, Computer, Contemporary Religious Community, cyberspace, declarations of faith, digital cultures, domestic  settings, Evangelic, Faith, GENDER},
	url = {http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/45226/1/Stewart,_Anna_Rose.pdf},
	author = {Stewart, Anna}
}
