Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality by David A. Palmer and Elijah Siegler (review)

Dream Trippers is a remarkable book examining the divergent ways Daoist discourse is utilized to construct "spiritual subjects" that respond to the forces of modernity and globalization. Taking as its foundation years of ethnographic research with both Chinese Daoists associated with Huashan mountain and American Daoists of varying stripes of commitment, the book examines how modern ideas of spirituality in a globalized world both contribute to and are shaped by a developing transnational Daoist culture.

The first chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book through analyzing the divergent assumptions about the self at play in the discourse of Chinese Daoist monastics and American participants on Healing Tao leader Michael Winn's China Dream Trips. David Palmer and Elijah Siegler aim to transcend a simple analysis of how these groups differ to consider instead the interactions between these two groups as they encounter each other on the Daoist mountain of Huashan. To accomplish this goal, the book sets the scene by detailing first the setting of the Huashan mountain and the discourse used to construct it as a sacred space by American and Chinese practitioners (chapter 2); then the historical and social context of the American practitioners (chapter 3); and finally the construction of the Quanzhen monastic community living at Huashan mountain (chapter 4).

The fifth chapter explores how these two groups interact on the mountain and introduces the theoretical term "transnational communitas" to describe unstructured and unmediated interactions between individuals from different cultures that result in mutually beneficial and personally significant experiences for both. Moments like these will be familiar to any scholar who has engaged in ethnographic research in a culture outside her own, and this theoretical term will prove exceptionally useful in future academic work.

The remaining two chapters provide an analysis of these encounters, beginning with the perspective of Louis Komjathy, a scholar-practitioner who argues for a more traditional, authority-based form of American Daoist practice (chapter 6). The authors conclude by analyzing the encounters through the potentials and pitfalls of a "third culture" that might support transnational Daoist practice even while reinforcing globalized forces of modernity (chapter 7). An epilogue describing an American-designed Daoist marriage ceremony held at Huashan and an appendix discussing methodological issues complete the monograph.

As a scholar trained in Asian religious history, I am familiar with many academics' dismissal of Euro-American practitioners of Asian religious traditions. At best, such practitioners are identified as well-meaning, but ignorant, while at worst, they are seen as self-obsessed remnants of an orientalist and imperialist mindset. As evidenced in Mark Singleton's Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Practice (2010), a more nuanced discourse has begun to develop that tries to consider Euro-American interpretations of Asian religious practices on their own terms, but this discourse often remains confined to the fields of religion in America and new religious movements. Most scholars of Asian religious traditions remain disinterested in giving legitimacy to casual, "spiritual" adherents of Asian religions and even dedicated practitioners like Komjathy himself may be looked at with some suspicion. Dream Trippers represents a monumental shift, therefore, in two major ways. First, Palmer and Siegler take seriously the claims of American Daoists—including the claim that they are not Daoists, but only utilizing Daoist techniques—and situate them within a theoretical framework that is neither dismissive nor trivializing. Second, their analysis of both the Huashan monks and the Dream Trippers as participants in a global Daoist field represents a much-needed challenge to the boundaries into which scholars find themselves pigeon-holed—Chinese religions, American religions, and so forth. These boundaries are artificial and ultimately limit our ability to produce effective research on what are increasingly transnational phenomena.

Specific chapters are highly recommended for an undergraduate class, most notably "The Subject" (chapter 1), which adroitly leads...