Benedikt Julius Kastner
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter
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Benedikt Julius Kastner is a founding member of GeNet-ISMRC.
Promotionsarbeit: The construction of authenticity in mindfulness apps. Transcultural processes of transformation in relation to the conceptualization of brands, consumption and self-optimization In my dissertation, I analyze mindfulness apps in connection with the discourse of selfoptimization. In apps such as “Buddhify“ and “The Mindfulness App“ mindfulness is designed differently. The apps constitute various transcultural monopolies of knowledge about mindfulness and about meditation. Examples are guided meditations, breathing exercises, body scans, healing sessions, etc. Design, sound, and content provide the consumer with a wide range of performative ascriptions of what mindfulness implies and what it does not imply. Mindfulness and meditation are no longer to be understood as exclusively Buddhist practices. Because of transcultural receptions in the U.S. in the 1970s, mindfulness became a keyword in therapeutic and medical treatments as well as in spiritualized discourses. Offered practices and beliefs in the apps are connoted differently. Sometimes, spiritualized, religious/Buddhist, therapeutic or branded in a more lifestyle way, the terms imply sundry semantics, so that the consumers themselves can decide which app optimizes their best according to their wishes. In my thesis, I examine the production process of mindfulness apps and how producers decide how they want to shape mindfulness in their apps authentically. From this point of view, mindfulness is significant in elaborating the current dynamic transformations of Buddhist and social practices and beliefs. One of my major research questions is, how processes of branding construct authenticity in the app. Mindfulness apps constitute a new understanding of Buddhist meditation and material culture (cf. religion & digital media). My scientific approach comes from a Religious and Cultural Studies background combined with social theory.