ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a range of dangers encountered in the field whilst conducting
research on the religious dimensions of social change in Nicaragua. It considers three
types of danger: physical, ethical and emotional, which are examined with particular
reference to my own research experience and more broadly in terms of the challenges
and dilemmas presented by cross-cultural research. Risk taking is often inevitable but
deciding what risks are necessary and how worthwhile it is to take them is one of the
key challenges of negotiating the field. The idea that the researcher ‘shares’ the danger
experienced by participants in order to understand their social world can negate very
real differences between researcher and participant. In some circumstances the
researcher may be more protected from physical danger by virtue of his or her status
and relative prosperity. However, in other situations, researchers may be more
vulnerable because they lack the culturally specific skills to recognize and defuse
potentially hazardous situations. This chapter also examines the ethical dangers
presented by cross-cultural research, highlighting the fraught nature of claiming
knowledge or access to the meaning of diverse discourses and practices. This is further
complicated by the power of the researcher to represent or misrepresent such diversity
to the world at large. Finally this chapter explores the emotional dangers I encountered
and argues that probing such experiences can make the researcher more attuned and
able to recognize honestly their own limitations and that of their work.