Religion 20.

Ethnographies of Religion, Text and

Context
Harvard University, Spring 2016
 
 
Instructor: Dr. Mara G. Block
Email: block@fas.harvard.edu
Office Hours: Barker Center 405, Thursdays 3:30-5p and by appointment
Course Time: 3-5p, Wednesdays
Location: Barker Center 403
 
 
Course Description
This course introduces students to ethnographic methods and to
techniques of ethnographic writing in the study of lived religious practice.
We will study theoretical debates about issues of power, subjectivity,
authority, and representation in ethnographic writing as we navigate
challenges and possibilities of what it means to think ethnographically. We
will read exemplary contemporary ethnographies of religion by both
anthropologists and scholars of religion. Students will conduct an
ethnographic research project that will introduce qualitative research
methods (including participant observation, field notes, and interviews)
alongside relevant policies, procedures, and practices of ethical conduct in
research with human subjects.
 
*Religion 20 meets the course requirement for concentrators in the Study
of Religion who plan to write a thesis using ethnographic methods
 
 

 
 
above: Frontispiece to Jesuit missionary/ethnologist Joseph François
Lafitau’s Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains (1724)
 

 
above: Frontispiece to anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of
the Western Pacific (1922)
*images cited in James Clifford’s “On Ethnographic Authority” (1983)
 
 
Course Goals
 
Ÿ To familiarize students with theoretical and methodological issues
surrounding the use of qualitative ethnographic research to study religion.
 
Ÿ To provide questions and texts that will enable students to cultivate
critical self-awareness of their subjectivity and positionality in engaging and
writing about lived religious practice.
 
Ÿ To introduce students to contemporary scholarship on religion,
anthropology, and ethnographic writing.
 
Ÿ To introduce students to the sustained practice of ethnographic fieldwork
as well as the ethics of conducting research with human subjects and the
poetics of ethnographic writing.
 
Course Requirements
 
Ÿ Attendance, Preparation, and Participation
Regular attendance and active participation are expected. Students should
come prepared having completed the reading and taken note of important
passages, themes, or questions for discussion.
 
Ÿ Weekly Post, due by noon on Tuesdays (9 total: week 2 through week
11, excluding Spring Recess in week 8)
Each week, students will write a short post (100-250 words) offering two
critical questions or comments on the week’s readings.
 
Ÿ Research Journal, due on Thursday 3/3, 3/24, 4/14, and on Friday 4/29
During the semester, students will conduct a pilot ethnographic research
project at a religious institution or another site where religion plays a
significant role. Field visits may include attending worship services as well
as scripture study classes and other group gatherings or outings. You are
expected to collect participant-observation data from a minimum of four
visits to the site. You are also expected to conduct a minimum of two
interviews with participants in your fieldsite.
You will submit your research journal throughout the semester in order to
encourage steady progress.
By the end of the semester, your research journal should include a
minimum of:
4 participant-observation fieldnotes, 2 interview fieldnotes, 4 theoretical
fieldnotes, your IRB application (to be submitted in-class only on 2/24),
your initial topic proposal, and your final topic proposal
(We will discuss ethics of establishing contact as well as techniques and
formats for participant-observation fieldnotes, interview fieldnotes, and
theoretical fieldnotes during the semester.)
Ÿ Initial Topic Proposal with Bibliography, due 3/2
Ÿ Revised Topic Proposal with Bibliography, due 3/23
 
Ÿ Research Presentation
Our seminar will culminate with presentations of student ethnographic
research projects.
 
Ÿ Final Paper, 12-15 pages, due May 4 (last day of reading period)
The final paper is an opportunity to process what you have learned through
your original field research. Papers should make an argument that engages
your ethnographic data alongside questions, issues, and ideas raised in our
course readings, our discussions, and in your independent library research.
 
Percentage Breakdown
Attendance, Preparation, and Participation       20%
Weekly Post                                                    20%
Research Journal                                             25%
Research Presentation                                     10%
Final Paper                                                      25%
 
Policies and Expectations
 
Collaboration: This course emphasizes dialogic and collaborative learning.
Discussion of the course materials and of your research projects is
encouraged. However, all written work must be your own.
 
Extensions: The weekly posts are meant to help you prepare for class
discussions. As such, no extensions will be granted for these assignments.
For other assignments, requests for extensions will be considered up to 24
hours before the deadline for submission of written work. If no extension is
requested or granted, 1/3 grade is taken off for each day late.
 
Laptops: Laptops are not permitted. The most engaging and productive
discussions that we can have take place without them.
 
Academic Integrity: The course holds students to the standards of
academic honesty outlined in the Harvard College Honor Code:
Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to
producing academic work of integrity – that is, work that adheres to the
scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources,
appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement
of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and
conclusions. Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or
misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own,
falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the
standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of
learning and affairs.
 
 
 
Course Materials
The following books should be acquired for the course:
 
Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha M. Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual
Assemblages of Transnational Religion. Columbia University Press, 2015.
ISBN: 9780231173179
 
Luhrmann, T. M. When God Talks Back: Understanding the American
Evangelical Relationship with God. Vintage Books, 2012.
ISBN: 9780307277275
 
Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist
Subject. Princeton University Press, 2005.
ISBN: 9780691149806
 
Roberts, Elizabeth F. S. God’s Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the
Andes. University of California Press, 2012.
ISBN: 9780520270831
 
Course Schedule
 
Week 1. Introduction
Wednesday, January 27.
 
Unit I. Theoretical and Methodological Issues
 
Week 2. What is Ethnographic Knowledge?
Wednesday, February 3.
 
Malinowski, Bronislaw. “Introduction: The Subject, Method and Scope of
this Enquiry,” in Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native
Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea
(1922), pp. 1-26
 
Geertz, Clifford. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of
Culture” and “Religion as a Cultural System,” in The Interpretation of
Cultures (1973), pp. 3-30, 87-125
 
Bernard, H. Russell. “Participant Observation,” in Research Methods in
Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, Fourth Edition
(2006), pp. 342-386
 
Recommended:
Asad, Talal. “Anthropological Reflections on Religion: Reflections on
Geertz,” Man, New Series, 18, no. 2 (June 1983): 237-259
*In this article, Asad critiques Geertz’s conception of religion in the essays
we are reading. Asad argues that Geertz offers insufficient discussion of
power and that he relies on a distinctly modern understanding of religion.
 
Nader, Laura. “Ethnography as theory,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic
Theory 1, no.1 (2011): 211-219
 
Week 3. Power, Subjectivity, and Ethnographic Authority
Wednesday, February 10.
 
Clifford, James. “On Ethnographic Authority,” Representations no. 2
(Spring 1983): 118-146
 
Clifford, James. “Introduction: Partial Truths,” in Writing Culture: The
Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (1986): 1-26
 
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “Ire in Ireland,” Ethnography 1, no. 1 (2000): 117-
140
 
Bernard, H. Russell. “Field Notes: How to Take, Code and Manage Them,”
in Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative
Approaches, Fourth Edition (2006), pp. 387-412
 
Recommended:
Narayan, Kirin. “How native is a ‘native’ anthropologist?,” American
Anthropologist 95, no. 3 (September 1993): 671-686
 
Salzman, Carl Philip. “On Reflexivity,” American Anthropologist 104, no. 3
(September 2002): 805-813
 
Week 4. Writing Culture, 25 Years Later
Wednesday, February 17.
 
Starn, Orin. “Writing Culture at 25: Special Editor’s Introduction,” Cultural
Anthropology 27, no. 3 (August 2012): 411-416
 
Clifford, James. “Feeling Historical,” Cultural Anthropology 27, no. 3
(August 2012): 417-426
 
Marcus, George E. “The Legacies of Writing Culture and the Near Future of
the Ethnographic Form: A Sketch,” Cultural Anthropology 27, no. 3 (August
2012): 427-445
 
*This issue is available through AnthroSource:
http://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezp-
prod1.hul.harvard.edu/hub/issue/10.1111/cuan.2012.27.issue-3/
 
Bernard, H. Russell. “Unstructured and Semistructured Interviewing,” in
Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative
Approaches, Fourth Edition (2006), pp. 210-250
 
Week 5. Institutional Review Board (IRB) Application Process
Wednesday, February 24.
 
“The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of
Human Subjects of Research” (1979)
 
Code of Federal Regulations, Title 45, Part 46 [45 CFR 46; the “Common
Rule”] (rev. 2009), selections
 
“Policies and Procedures for Human Research Protection – University
Area, Committee on the Use of Human Subjects in Research, Harvard
University,” selections
*selections are available on the course website, though you are
encouraged to read through the whole document, which is available at
Harvard’s Committee on the Use of Human Subjects (CUHS) website:
http://cuhs.harvard.edu/procedures
 
★IRB Application due, in-class (2/24)★
*Download and complete the IRB application for your ethnographic
research project (in-class submission only) available on Harvard’s
Committee on the use of Human Subjects Website:
http://cuhs.harvard.edu/
 
Recommended:
Stark, Laura. Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical
Research. The University of Chicago Press, 2011
*Stark’s book draws on both archival and ethnographic research of IRBs.
Though the book focuses on bioethics and clinical/experimental research,
its insight into historical and legal issues surrounding IRB deliberation
processes is an interesting angle into the ongoing conversations we will
have about what makes different forms of knowledge authoritative.
 
Week 6. “Repugnant Cultural Others”: Theological Tensions between
Anthropology and Religion
Wednesday, March 2.
 
Asad, Talal. “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category,”
in Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity
and Islam (1993): 27-54
 
Cannell, Fenella. “The Anthropology of Christianity,” in The Anthropology of
Christianity (2006), pp. 1-50
 
Howell, Brian M. “The Repugnant Cultural Other Speaks Back: Christian
Identity as Ethnographic ‘Standpoint’,” Anthropological Theory 7, no. 4
(2007): 371-391
 
Recommended:
Harding, Susan. “Representing Fundamentalism: The Problem of the
Repugnant Cultural Other,” Social Research 5, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 373-
393
 
Klassen. Pamela E. “Christianity as a Polemical Concept,” in A Companion
to the Anthropology of Religion (2013), 344-362
 
★Submit Research Journal (3/3)★
 
Unit II. Ethnographies of Religion
 
Week 7. Ethics, Politics, and Religious Pedagogies
Wednesday, March 9.
 
Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist
Subject. Princeton University Press, 2005.
 
Week 8.
Wednesday, March 16. No Class: Spring Recess
 
Week 9. Biomedicine and the Difference between Devotion and Belief
Wednesday, March 23.
 
Roberts, Elizabeth F. S. God’s Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the
Andes. University of California Press, 2012.
 
★Submit Research Journal (3/24)★
 
Week 10. Psychological Research and Ethnographic Knowledge
Wednesday, March 30.
 
Luhrmann, T. M. When God Talks Back: Understanding the American
Evangelical Relationship with God. Vintage Books, 2012.
 
Recommended:
Book Symposium on When God Talks Back in HAU: Journal of
Ethnographic Theory 3, no. 3 (2013): 349-398
*Open access online:
http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/issue/view/hau3.3 (Links to an
external site.)
 
Week 11. Race, Gender, and Transnational Religion
Wednesday, April 6.
 
Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha M. Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual
Assemblages of Transnational Religion. Columbia University Press, 2015.
 
Unit III. Research Presentations
 
Week 12. Student Research Presentations
Wednesday, April 13.
 
★Submit Research Journal (4/14)★
 
Week 13. Student Research Presentations
Wednesday, April 20.
 
Week 14. Student Research Presentations
Wednesday, April 27.
 
★Submit Research Journal, Friday (4/29)★
 
★Final Paper due Wednesday, May 4 (last day of reading period) ★