ABSTRACT
This chapter comments on the methodological experiences of the author, a historian working on the religious structures of the Jiangnan region’s society from early modern to modern to contemporary times. Jiangnan is characterized by the abundance of written, published historical material (some of which, such as newspaper reports, contains quasi-ethnographic detail), and by early and extensive destruction of the religious landscape. This situation creates specific opportunities and challenges for historical anthropology. The chapter explores four dangers for the historian: Doing armchair anthropology without fieldwork; Believing uncritically in oral history; Putting aside the transformations of modernity as being another scholar’s job; and Going to the field to ask questions before reading the written record about the place. Finally the chapter discusses how to deal with two frequent and opposite predicaments: being confronted with facts that appear in the written sources but are not apparent in the field, and conversely, seeing facts in the field that are not found in the textual sources.
