IAS Visiting Fellow Professor Sébastien Tutenges delivers a seminar on their research.

For two decades, Sébastien Tutenges has conducted ethnographic research in bars, nightclubs, festivals, drug dens, nightlife resorts, and underground dance parties in a quest to answer a fundamental question: Why do people across cultures gather regularly to intoxicate themselves? In this talk, he argues that the primary aim of group intoxication is the religious experience that Durkheim calls collective effervescence, the essence of which is a sense of connecting with other people and being part of a larger whole. This experience is empowering and emboldening and may lead to crime and deviance, but it is at the same time vital to our humanity because it strengthens social bonds and solidarity. In developing this argument, Sébastien will present a new definition of collective effervescence, propose a typology of its varieties, and discuss the ways commercial forces amplify and capitalise on this universal human drive.

Arrivals from 11.45am for a 12pm start. For those joining in-person, lunch will be served after the seminar from 1pm.