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Dilemmas in Participant Observation in Religious Contexts


 
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1. Title Title of document Dilemmas in Participant Observation in Religious Contexts - Religion as Relation
 
2. Creator Author's name, affiliation, country Kim Knibbe; University of Groningen; Netherlands
 
3. Subject Discipline(s) Religious Studies
 
4. Subject Keyword(s) study of religion; religious studies methodologies; religious studies approaches; philosophy of religion; history of religious studies; history of religion; anthropology and religion
 
5. Subject Subject classification Religious Studies Methodologies; philosophy
 
6. Description Abstract Taking up the “problem of belief” discussed in this introduction, but now from a more practical perspective, Kim Knibbe (Chapter 10) reflects on the dilemmas of conducting participant observation in religious contexts. She asks how, as a researcher, one navigates the ways in which religious ways of explaining, interpreting and making sense of the world may compete or clash with academic ones. Traditionally, there seem to be roughly three options available to the researcher: methodological atheism, methodological theism or methodological agnosticism. Knibbe demonstrates that each of these positions create their own problems in ethnographic fieldwork, particularly in terms of the relationship between the researcher and the “researched”. Drawing on her fieldwork among people who call themselves “spiritual” in the Dutch context, she discusses how developing and maintaining rapport involves negotiating not only issues of differences in cognitive frameworks, but also differences in embodiment, emotion and affect. By summarizing some of the literature and drawing on her personal experiences, Knibbe explores how views on dealing with the dilemmas discussed relate to different ideas about what “research” entails. In a very concrete way, then, the chapter by Knibbe exemplifies the kind of reflection on their own positionality and presuppositions that Van den Belt in his contribution argues all researchers should engage in.
 
7. Publisher Organizing agency, location Equinox Publishing Ltd
 
8. Contributor Sponsor(s)
 
9. Date (YYYY-MM-DD) 24-Oct-2021
 
10. Type Status & genre Peer-reviewed Article
 
11. Type Type
 
12. Format File format PDF
 
13. Identifier Uniform Resource Identifier https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/books/article/view/42559
 
14. Identifier Digital Object Identifier 10.1558/equinox.42559
 
15. Source Journal/conference title; vol., no. (year) Equinox eBooks Publishing; Religion as Relation
 
16. Language English=en en
 
18. Coverage Geo-spatial location, chronological period, research sample (gender, age, etc.)
 
19. Rights Copyright and permissions Copyright 2014 Equinox Publishing Ltd