Methods for the Study of Religious Change - From Religious Studies to Worldview Studies - André Droogers
Chapter 9 Fieldwork on Identity: Contested and Politicized Research
Methods for the Study of Religious Change - From Religious Studies to Worldview Studies - André Droogers
Martijn de Koning [+]
Radboud University
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Martijn de Koning studied anthropology at VU University and defended his PhD thesis there on religious identities among young Moroccan-Dutch youth. He is a participant in the Radboud University research project “Salafism as a Transnational Movement.” In his project he looks at how young Muslims actively engage with the writings of major Salafi religious leaders in the Middle East and their representatives in the Netherlands. He maintains his own weblog: http://religionresearch.org/martijn.
Description
In Chapter 9 on identity the central methodological question is: how has the fieldworker on religion to deal with (to play seriously) with contested identities (of herself and of the others?). In this chapter three cases are discussed in which fieldworkers entered the politicized field of Western Islam in the Netherlands. The researchers in this chapter demonstrate that in order to understand Western Islam from person to person, one has to make shifts in the traditional insider/outsider positioning, in particular by searching for a (partial) physical or mental inclusion in the cultural spheres of Western Islam.