ABSTRACT
Researchers who conduct fi eld research seek to understand religious phenomena by participating as fully as possible while observing and refl ecting on what people do. More than seeking merely to describe religious activities, they are involved in a process with rich and radical implications for scholarly engagement with religion. The ideological justifi cation of fi eldwork strongly indicates that scholars should focus most on observable activities, actual events and practice, rather than on what texts, preachers or even ‘ordinary’ participants assert people ought to do. While they will pay attention to people’s ambitions to live up to some exalted, authoritative version of what a religion should be, it is ‘what people do’ that engages fi eldwork researchers. They may also ask questions about religious texts and the ‘tradition’ that forms the model of how a religion ‘should be’—but the purpose of such questions will be an attempt to better understand people’s experiences and interpretations. Religion, from this
perspective, is not properly understood without attention to its fully embodied, materialized, local and varying practice: its vernacular or lived reality. By implication, academic understanding is best sought by scholars who are willing and able to participate reasonably fully in the fi eld of performance and experience that they research. By entering the ‘fi eld’ of religious life, performance and community, researchers seek to contribute to academic knowledge and debate. This chapter about fi eldwork research among religious people uses the subtitle ‘participant observation’ to draw attention to the central ways of doing fi eldwork.
