Personal Knowledge and Beyond : Reshaping the Ethnography of Religion

by Spickard, James V.

• ISBN13: 9780814798034
• ISBN10: 0814798039
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-02-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

Over the last decade the sociology of religion and religious studies have experienced a surge of ethnographic research. Scholars now use ethnography, as anthropologists have long done, as a valued source of knowledge from which they draw their pictures of the religious world.Yet, many researchers of religion have yet to grapple with the issues that are changing anthropologists' use of the method. Personal Knowledge and Beyond seeks to foster a cross-disciplinary rethinking of ethnography's possibilities and limits for the study of religions. It provides an overview of recent debates while also pushing them in new directions. In addition, it offers critiques of some of anthropology's reigning conceptualizations.The volume brings together many of the best-known ethnographic researchers of religion, including Karen McCarthy Brown, Lynn Davidman, Armin Geertz, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Mary Jo Neitz, and Thomas Tweed. Together, they share substantively from their fieldwork and consider the consequences for the study of religion of rejecting old ethnographic myths, as well as the risks of replacing them with new ones. The volume will be of interest to students as well as to experienced scholars in the field.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Whither Ethnography? Transforming the Social-Scientific Study of Religion	1	(16)
James V. Spickard
J. Shawn Landres
PART I Being an Ethnographer
Truth, Subjectivity, and Ethnographic Research	17	(10)
Lynn Davidman
From the Heart of My Laptop: Personal Passion and Research on Violence against Women	27	(6)
Nancy Nason-Clark
Walking betweent he Worlds: Permeable Boundaries, Ambiguous Identities	33	(14)
Mary Jo Neitz
Dancing on the Fence: Researching Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Christians	47	(16)
Melissa M. Wilcox
PART II Doing Ethnography
Between the Living and the Dead: Fieldwork, History, and the Interpreter's Position	63	(12)
Thomas A. Tweed
``But Are They Really Christian?'' Contesting Knowledge and Identity in and out of the Field	75	(13)
Simon Coleman
Transitional Identities: Self, Other, and the Ethnographic Process	88	(12)
Janet L. Jacobs
Being (in) the Field: Defining Ethnography in Southern California and Central Slovakia	100	(13)
J. Shawn Landres
Encountering Latina Mobilization: Field Research on the U.S./Mexico Border	113	(14)
Milagros Pena
PART III Writing and Reading Ethnography
Writing about ``the Other,'' Revisited	127	(7)
Karen McCarthy Brown
``There's Power in the Blood'': Writing Serpent Handling as Everyday Life	134	(12)
Jim Birckhead
Voicing Spiritualities: Anchored Composites as an Approach to Understanding Religious Commitment	146	(16)
Marion S. Goldman
Against Univocality: Re-reading Ethnographies of Conservative Protestant Women	162	(13)
Julie Ingersoll
A Conscious Connection to All That Is: The Color Purple as Subversive and Critical Ethnography	175	(20)
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes
PART IV Beyond Personal Knowledge
New-Old Directions in the Social Scientific Study of Religion: Ethnography, Phenomenology, and the Human Body	195	(17)
Meredith B. McGuire
Greening Ethnography and the Study of Religion	212	(13)
Laurel Kearns
As the Other Sees Us: On Reciprocity and Mutual Reflection in the Study of Native American Religions	225	(12)
Armin W. Geertz
On the Epistemology of Post-Colonial Ethnography	237	(16)
James V. Spickard
References	253	(22)
Contributors	275	(6)
Index	281