In this talk, Dr. Sutton will provide an overview of her recently completed PhD thesis, based upon fieldwork with a community of digital detoxers in Northern California. Digital detoxers escaped their technology and modern lives, attending a four-day digital detox in the Mendocino forest. But how do digital detoxers navigate a return to their digital lives? How much is digital detoxing really about the technology itself? The talk will focus on two of the most original contributions to her research, namely: the relationship between digital news, the Trump presidency in 2017, and notions of spiritual survival, along with her argument that digital detoxing is best understood as an example of New Age ‘re-enchantment’ which seeks to remedy a ‘disenchanted’ modern world.
