This article discusses structural, logistical, and administrative issues associated with the use of participant observation assignments in teaching the anthropology of religion. Fieldwork presents extraordinary opportunities for teaching students about the nature of cultural difference, but it also poses pedagogical challenges that require careful planning and supervision. The article reviews problems including the scope and nature of the observation, student preparation and guidance, connecting with fieldsites, presentation formats, issues of ethics and confidentiality, and university administrative considerations.
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In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2010
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 177–184 (8 total)
Religion through the Looking Glass
Fieldwork, Biography, and Authorship in Southwest China and Beyond
Katherine Swancutt
Euro-American scholarship more generally. I wish to extend this focus by exploring the fascination that fieldwork-based researchers and their interlocutors have with each other and with studying religion. As I show, this fascination may lead
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 51–67 (17 total)
Khaled Furani
foundational, if contestable, concepts (e.g., culture, humanity) and its constitutive practice of ethnographic fieldwork. As a result, theology does not end with anthropology; rather, it becomes reconstituted within the latter’s secular syntax. Anthropology
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 86–102 (17 total)
Adapting to Crisis
Migration Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Aydan Greatrick, Jumana Al-Waeli, Hannah Sender, Susanna Corona Maioli, Jin L. Li, and Ellen Goodwin
we had previously imagined having to deal with uncertainty and change in our fieldwork, we had not imagined becoming mutually—though differently—affected by the same global pandemic. This article focuses on the specific, but not unique, experiences of
In Migration and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2022
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 115–123 (9 total)
“Nothing Is Expensive, Everything Cheap, Nothing Explosive!”
Side Stories from Molenbeek, Brussels
Christine Moderbacher
market, where I conducted fieldwork for my PhD dissertation, “Crafting Lives in Brussels: Making and Mobility on the Margins.” Out of ten participants, it was these two middle-aged men from Tunisia and Guinea who were eager to tell me their stories. Since
Politicizing Elsewhere(s)
Negotiating Representations of Neo-Pentecostal Aesthetic Practice in Berlin
Dominik Mattes
group over an extended period of time? These questions became salient in relation to my negotiations with research participants about specific passages of academic texts growing out of my fieldwork with a diasporic religious group in Berlin. This
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 163–175 (13 total)
Portrait
Talal Asad
Talal Asad, Jonathan Boyarin, Nadia Fadil, Hussein Ali Agrama, Donovan O. Schaefer, and Ananda Abeysekara
-speaking world, the world from which my mother had come. But my initial criticism of the focus in anthropology on ‘fieldwork’ was motivated by a dissatisfaction with the notion that it was a direct and therefore reliable observational method (its empiricism
Albert I. Baumgarten
argument. Spiro found Douglas's conclusions unconvincing. He insisted that they suffered from overgeneralization and lacked an adequate basis in fieldwork. He charged that the main conclusion of Purity and Danger was “supported neither by evidence nor
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 30–44 (15 total)
Julián Antonio Moraga Riquelme, Leslie E. Sponsel, Katrien Pype, Diana Riboli, Ellen Lewin, Marina Pignatelli, Katherine Swancutt, Alejandra Carreño Calderón, Anastasios Panagiotopoulos, Sergio González Varela, Eugenia Roussou, Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Miho Ishii, Markus Balkenhol, and Marcelo González Gálvez
Mayapuri (the city of illusion)—is considered not only the financial and commercial capital of the country, but also the heart of the entertainment and Bollywood industry. During his fieldwork, carried out mostly in 2002 and 2003, Elison embarked on a
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2020
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 205–228 (24 total)
Learning the Elsewhere of ‘Inner Space’
The Affective Pedagogy of Post-Secular Sufi Healing in Germany
Nasima Selim
Ruhaniat was one of the three Sufi networks 3 that I mostly engaged with during my 15 months of fieldwork (2013–2015) in Berlin and connected sites in Germany and Turkey ( Selim 2015b , 2019 ). At that time, three different streams of the Inayati networks
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 105–119 (15 total)