Field Work Project

There are essentially two different, but directly related ways to study religion. The first is to look at the major texts and come to understand the philosophy that the religion teaches. This approach, however, ignores the way the religion is practiced "on the ground"-- what practicioners and believers actually do at church, temple, or during their daily lives. Anthropologists who study religion focus more on the way the religion in practiced in people's daily lives and less on the abstract ideas. In this course, we are going to try to strike a balance between these two disparate elements. One of the ways that we are going to do this is through this assignment.

Fieldwork is one of the key components of anthropological (and therefore religious) study. Anthropologists spend many hours watching people live their lives, practice their religions and ask them lots of questions about what they are doing. For example, an anthropologist studying Newar Buddhism might spend hours watching a cremation ceremony (which take about ten hours) and recording everything that goes on. He might also attend a festival with an informant who would explain each element and its symbolism. This is how our collective understanding of religion has been built over the years.

For this assignment, you are going to experience a religion different than your own tradition. That means if you are catholic, you cannot go to a catholic mass, etc. You need to witness and record some event that is foreign to you. I encourage you to go far away form your normal comfort zone-- step out of who you are and try something that is new to you. One of the things I find most exciting about this type of work, in my own experience, is to step our of my comfort zone and meet new people. There are four different approaches you can take in this assignment:

1. Interview with a devotee and a "life history"

2. Observations at a temple, church, synagogue, mosque, monastery

3. Investigation of religious activity in a secular setting

4. Other encounters with the instructors approval

While you are conducting your fieldwork, you should keep a field work journal. Write down everything you see and witness: the symbolism, the responses of the audience, everything. It is these notes that are going to allow you to turn your experience into a well organized and analytical paper. Your paper should begin by describing your methodology, and then present your findings and draw conclusions.

The final step is to write an ethnography. You should use the notes you have complied to create an narrative, descriptive paper presenting your findings and anaylzing your experience. You should try to explain not only what happened, but why things happened (yes, you may need to do some research here for this!). You should read this guide from Donald E. Miller and Barry Jay Seltser's Writing and Research in Religious Studies to doing religious studies fieldwork before you begin this process.