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Informationen zum Autor Hillary K. Crane is an associate professor of anthropology at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. Her research includes areas where religious and medical discourses intersect or conflict, primarily on the subject of gender construction. Deana L. Weibel is an associate professor of anthropology, as well as chair of the anthropology department, at Grand Valley State University. She studies contemporary pilgrimage to Roman Catholic shrines, particularly in France, as well as the reinterpretation of these shrines by "religious creatives," pilgrims who practice intentional syncretism in highly individualized ways. Klappentext In this collection of essays, anthropologists of religion examine the special challenges they face when studying populations that proselytize. Conducting fieldwork among these groups may involve attending services, meditating, praying, and making pilgrimages. Anthropologists participating in such research may unwittingly give the impression that their interest is more personal than professional, and inadvertently encourage missionaries to impose conversion upon them. Moreover, anthropologists' attitudes about religion, belief, and faith, as well as their response to conversion pressures, may interfere with their objectivity and cause them to impose their own understandings on the missionaries. Although anthropologists have extensively and fruitfully examined the role of identity in research-particularly gender and ethnic identity-religious identity, which is more fluid and changeable, has been relatively neglected. This volume explores the role of religious identity in fieldwork by examining how researchers respond to participation in religious activities and to the ministrations of missionaries, both academically and personally. Including essays by anthropologists studying the proselytizing religions of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, as well as other religions, this volume provides a range of responses to the question of how anthropologists should approach the gap between belief and disbelief when missionary zeal imposes its interpretations on anthropological curiosity. Zusammenfassung The essays composed in this book encompass ethnographic fieldwork in Muslim! Christian! Buddhist! and other populations! addressing such topics as the fluidity of the anthropologist's own religious identity! objectivity versus subjectivity! the issue of reflexivity in ethnography! and the multi-positionality of the researcher. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction: Writing Religion James BieloChapter 1: Flirting with Conversion: Negotiating Researcher Non-Belief with Missionaries Hillary K. CraneChapter 2: Chasing the Wind: The Challenges of Studying Spirit Possession Susan M. KenyonChapter 3: How "They" Construct "Us": Reflections on the Politics of Identity in the Field Jennifer A. SelbyChapter 4: Revisiting The Inner Life: Self-Reflexive Ethnography and Emotional Enculturation Daniel WashburnChapter 5: I'm Just a Soul Whose Intentions are Good: Observations from the Back Pew Lisa DiCarloChapter 6: Silence, Betrayal, and Becoming Within the Interpretive Gap of Participant-ObservationKatharine L. WiegeleChapter 7: Blind in a Land of Visionaries: When a Non-Pilgrim Studies Pilgrimage Deana L. Weibel...
