عنوان

Encountering Extraordinary Worlds:

شماره

LA122786

زبان متن نوشتاري يا گفتاري و مانند آن

انگلیسی

عنوان اصلي

Encountering Extraordinary Worlds:

نام عام مواد

[Article]

ساير اطلاعات عنواني

The Rules of Ethnographic Engagement and the Limits of Anthropological Knowing

نام نخستين پديدآور

Joel S. Kahn

محل نشرو پخش و غیره

Leiden

نام ناشر، پخش کننده و غيره

Brill

متن يادداشت

This article explores the ways anthropology might both draw on and contribute to current debates on religion by asking how the ethnographic encounter provides a perspective from which to address "bigger" questions about the place of religion in modern lifeworlds. In particular, the article addresses situations in which the gap between anthropological "construals" of the world and those of its research subjects becomes impossible to ignore. I begin by the phenomenological strategy of "suspending disbelief." This turns out to be problematic in the light of the postmodern/poststructuralist critique of phenomenology, which suggests that "experience," being so tightly bound up in context, cannot be shared across cultural, linguistic, and ontological boundaries. However, to refuse to take our respondents' claims about extraordinary experience seriously is hardly the democratizing move that anthropologists and others claim it to be. How, then, is the experiential dimension to be incorporated into ethnographic practice? Acknowledging the multiple ways in which anthropologists are bound up in an already constituted world of encounters challenges many of the received understandings of ethnography. It allows us to bring experience back into the anthropological frame by allowing us to see that experiences deemed extraordinary - "ours" as well as "theirs" - are a valid and crucial component of human existence. If "we" are part of "their" world and they are part of ours, can we really not share experiences across the ontological divide? This article explores the ways anthropology might both draw on and contribute to current debates on religion by asking how the ethnographic encounter provides a perspective from which to address "bigger" questions about the place of religion in modern lifeworlds. In particular, the article addresses situations in which the gap between anthropological "construals" of the world and those of its research subjects becomes impossible to ignore. I begin by the phenomenological strategy of "suspending disbelief." This turns out to be problematic in the light of the postmodern/poststructuralist critique of phenomenology, which suggests that "experience," being so tightly bound up in context, cannot be shared across cultural, linguistic, and ontological boundaries. However, to refuse to take our respondents' claims about extraordinary experience seriously is hardly the democratizing move that anthropologists and others claim it to be. How, then, is the experiential dimension to be incorporated into ethnographic practice? Acknowledging the multiple ways in which anthropologists are bound up in an already constituted world of encounters challenges many of the received understandings of ethnography. It allows us to bring experience back into the anthropological frame by allowing us to see that experiences deemed extraordinary - "ours" as well as "theirs" - are a valid and crucial component of human existence. If "we" are part of "their" world and they are part of ours, can we really not share experiences across the ontological divide?

تاريخ نشر

2014

توصيف ظاهري

237-254

عنوان

Numen

شماره جلد

61/2-3

شماره استاندارد بين المللي پياييندها

1568-5276

اصطلاح موضوعی

anthropology

اصطلاح موضوعی

experience

اصطلاح موضوعی

phenomenology

اصطلاح موضوعی

religion

مستند نام اشخاص تاييد نشده

Joel S. Kahn

شماره بازیابی

10.1163/15685276-12341318

نام الکترونيکي

فرمت انتشار

p

نوع ماده

[Article]

کد کاربرگه

275578

سطح دسترسي

a

تكميل شده

Y