Fieldwork

Focus on Fieldwork: An RSP Remix

Podcast
In the first RSP Remix, Dave McConeghy guides us through recent RSP discussions of fieldwork and its impact on scholarship. This episode features excerpts from conversations with Christopher R. Cotter, Spencer Dew, Liz Bucar, Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, Robin Veldman, Elizabeth Pérez, and Cristina Rocha.

Between the Lab and the Field: Xygalatas and the Science of Extreme Rituals

Response
Breaking down the boundary between the research lab and the “field site” is becoming more common beyond the boundaries of religious studies and anthropology. The research project of Dimitris Xygalatas is part of a growing trend in cognitive approaches to human sociality. This trend involves breaking down the boundary between the lab and the field; sometimes this involves bringing the field into the lab—an approach not uncommon to many social psychologists

Santo Daime

Podcast
"Pretty much unprepared for the sensory feast of a Santo Daime ritual, I was visually struck by the colourful ‘uniforms’ and brightly decorated ceremonial space. The strongly rhythmical and fervently sung ‘hymns’ also made an impact, as did the powerful smell and bitter taste of the religious sacrament which practitioners call ‘Daime’.

Ethnographic Fieldwork: Falling in Love or Keeping your Distance?

Response
An anthropologist who has conducted fieldwork in Puerto Rico and in New York, examining, among other things, the lived experiences of possession and trance and as found among practitioners of Santería, Spiritism and other Afro-Cuban religious movements, Schmidt is well equipped to discuss the reality of undertaking ethnographic fieldwork on the topic of religion.

Doing Anthropological Fieldwork

Podcast
“If we want to discover what [wo]man amounts to, we can only find it in what [wo]men are: and what [wo]men are, above all other things, is various. It is in understanding that variousness – its range, its nature, its basis, and its implications – that we shall come to construct a concept of human nature that, more than a statistical shadow, and less than a primitivists dream, ...

Insider and Outsider: An Anthropological Perspective

Response
"What my own position may speak to is the categorisation of "religion"; when talked of in isolation, "religion" remains something fixed and visible. But in fact it intersects heavily across cultural domains, and having been in this ‘piggy in the middle’ situation, it is interesting to note the Christian heritage which is shared both by my family, myself and my non-religious participants: we are all insiders to a point."
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