RELAJO

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.