Global Nomads: Techno and New Age as Transnational Countercultures in Ibiza and Goa

by Anthony D'Andrea

Global Nomads provides a unique introduction to the globalization of countercultures, a topic largely unknown in and outside academia. Anthony D’Andrea examines the social life of mobile expatriates who live within a global circuit of countercultural practice in paradoxical paradises. Based on nomadic fieldwork across Spain and India, the study analyzes how and why these post-metropolitan subjects reject the homeland in order to shape an alternative lifestyle. They become artists, therapists, exotic traders and bohemian workers seeking to integrate labor, mobility and spirituality within a cosmopolitan culture of expressive individualism. These countercultural formations, however, unfold under neo-liberal regimes that appropriate utopian spaces, practices and imaginaries as commodities for tourism, entertainment and media consumption. In order to understand the paradoxical globalization of countercultures, Global Nomads develops a dialogue between global and critical studies by introducing the concept of 'neo-nomadism' which seeks to overcome some of the shortcomings in studies of globalization. This book is an essential aide for undergraduate, postgraduate and research students of Sociology, Anthropology of Globalization, Cultural Studies and Tourism Studies.

Genres: Sociology

264 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2007

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Global Nomads is sociologist Anthony D’Andrea’s study of a new population that has arisen through processes of globalization, carried out through participation in two interlinked social scenes in Ibiza and India in the late 1990s/early 2000s. This group of Westerners living abroad might be commonly labelled "hippies", "freaks" or "New Agers", but D’Andrea labels them "expressive expatriates" for the way they have integrated mobility into their economic strategies and countercultural lifestyles.

In the 1990s, D’Andrea visited Ibiza several times, stayed for a prolonged time and became acquainted with a variety of people there. The first Ibizan expatriate demographic he studies are New Age types who live in the hinterlands of the island, avoiding the commercial clubs (except for a few which they consider acceptable and, by making the guest list, can enter for free) and elaborating their own rituals of yoga, alternative diets, etc. By the late 1990s, any sense of Ibiza as a reasonable retreat for an anti-materialist counterculture had been eroded, and it is no surprise that many of the people he describes were now aged 40–60 and had moved to Ibiza long before the club explosion.

Another Ibizan population that D’Andrea describes are seasonal workers who accept poor wages so that they have access to the wild party scene there. D’Andrea makes a thought-provoking observation on how traditional Marxism fails to account for such workers who would deliberately impoverish themselves for the sake of expanded leisure. D’Andrea’s detailed breakdown of the economics of the turn-of-the-millennium superclubs makes this a must-read for any fan of dance music.

In exploring Ibiza, D’Andrea observed that much of the counterculture there had ties with India, such as spending the winters in the Subcontinent while life on the island was dormant. D’Andrea’s first stop in India was Pune, namely the ashram set up there by the cult leader Osho (the new name he took just before his death in 1989, having been previously known as Rajneesh). D’Andrea describes the variety of people attracted here. He also notes that the ashram was undergoing a drastic transition in these years, moving from a communal space for free love to an extremely staid and gentrified community with high entrance fees that downplayed its past. The author is interested in the demographics of the visitors, noting how local Indians are treated very differently than the Westerners, and how Africans are conspicuously absent.

The second Indian scene that D’Andrea explores is the north of Goa, namely Anjuta Beach where independently organized techno music parties were still common at the time of writing. The economics of the foreigners resident here, i.e. how they could afford to live in India (cheap rents, quick money from drug sales, DJing and hippie market sales), is again treated in depth. I found most of the observations of the values of the Indian beach "freaks" corroborated by my own experience in the area (in Karnatakaf state south of Goa, where most of this scene has moved on to) a few years back, and I’m happy that this interesting population has been formally documented.

If you are interested (as I am) in dance music, countercultures or the sort of trans-continental mobility found in e.g. the Istanbul-Kathmandu trail, then you’ll love this book. While the introductory chapter is a somewhat dry bit of scholarly writing, and D’Andrea is exceedingly fond of citing Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus throughout the text, you don’t have to have any training in sociology to enjoy this book immensely.