Ethnographic approaches to the study of religion

Compiled by Dr Sean McLoughlin, University of Leeds

Journals:
Culture and Religion
Fieldwork in Religion
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
Journal of Contemporary Religion
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
Religion


Introductions to Ethnography:

Suggested Reading:
Bryman, A. (2008) Social Research Methods. Third edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 17
Atkinson, P.(2007) Ethnography: Principles in Practice. 3
rd
edition. London: Routledge.
Brewer, J. (2000) Ethnography. Milton Keynes: Open University Press
Fetterman, D. (2009) Ethnography: Step-by-Step. 3
rd
edition. London: Sage.

Further Reading:
Atkinson, P. (1990) The Ethnographic Imagination: Textual Constructions of Society. London:
Routledge.
(eds.) Atkinson, P., Delamont, S., Coffey, A., Lofland, J. & Lofland, L. (2007) Handbook of
Ethnography. London: Sage.
(eds.) Clifford, J. & Marcus, G. (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Clifford, J. (1988)The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature and
Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Coffey, A. (1999) The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and the Representation of Reality. London,
Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage.
Davies, C. A. (1999) Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. London
and New York: Routledge.
Emerson, R. (1995) Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Gingrich, A. and Richard G. Fox (eds) (2002) Anthropology, By Comparison, London and New
York: Routledge.
Hammersley, M. (1990) Whats wrong with ethnography? The myth of theoretical description,
Sociology, Vol. 24, No. 4, 597-615
Hammersley, M. (1992) Whats Wrong with Ethnography? London: Routledge.
Hobbs, D. and May T. (1993) Interpreting the Field: Accounts of Ethnography. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Marcus, G. E. and Fischer, M. (1999), Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental
Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Marcus, G. (2007) Ethnography Two Decades After Writing Culture: From the Experimental to
the Baroque, Anthropological Quarterly, 80(4), 1127-1145.
Spradley, J. P. (1979) The Ethnographic Interview. Orlando: Rinehart and Winston.
(eds.) McLean, A., & Leibing, A. (2007) The Shadow Side of Fieldwork: Exploring the Blurred
Borders Between Ethnography and Life Wiley-Blackwell
Van Maanen, J. (1988) Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: Chicago University
Press.


Auto-Ethnography

Bochner, A. & Ellis, C. (2001) Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature and Aesthetics.
Lanham, MD.: AltaMira Press.
Heewon V. Chang (2008) Autoethnography as Method. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Coffey, A. (1999) The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity. London: Sage.
Davies, C. Aull (2007) Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others 2
nd
edition. New
York: Routledge.
Ellis, C. (2008) Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections on Life and Work. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast
Press.
Ellis, C. (2004) The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Autoethnography. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Muncey, T. (2010) Creating Autoethnographies. London: Sage.
Reed-Danahay, D. (1997) Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. Oxford: Berg.



Ethnography and the Study of Religion:

Suggested Reading:
(eds.) Spickard, J., Landres, S., & McGuire, M. (2002) Personal Knowledge and Beyond:
Reshaping the Ethnography of Religion. New York: New York University Press

Further Reading:
Bennett, C. (1996) In Search of the Sacred. London: Cassell
Bowman, M. (1992) Phenomenology, fieldwork and religion. British Association for the Study of
Religions Occasional Paper, 5 (and in Sutcliffe (ed), see below).
Braun, W. and McCutcheon, R. T. (eds) (2000) Guide to the Study of Religion. New York: Cassell.
Geaves, R. (2007) Fieldwork in the Study of Religion, in Chryssides, G. and Geaves, R., The Study
of Religion: An Introduction to Key Ideas and Methods, London and New York: Continuum.
Knott, K. (2010) Insider/outsider perspectives, in J Hinnells (ed) A Routledge Companion to the
Study of Religions, London: Routledge, pp.259-73.
Lewis, I. (2003) Arguments with Ethnography: Comparative Approaches to History, Politics and
Religion. London: Continuum.
(ed.) McCutcheon, R. (ed.) (1999) The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion. London:
Cassell.
Nesbitt, E. (2009) The teacher of religion as ethnographer, in (ed.) P. Clarke, The Oxford
Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.965-85.
Shaw, R. (1995) Feminist anthropology and the gendering of religious studies in U. King (ed.) Religion
and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell.
Spickard, J. (2009) Ethnography/religion: explorations in field and classroom, in (ed.) P. Clarke,
The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.986-
1008.


Ethnographies of Religion

Suggested Reading:
Barker, E. (1984) The Making of a Moonie: Brainwashing or Choice? Oxford: Blackwell.
Brown, K. McCarthy (1991) Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., and Schachter, S. (1956) When Prophecy Fails: A Social and
Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World. New York,
San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Martin D. Stringer (2008) Contemporary Western Ethnography and the Definition of Religion.
London: Continuum.

Further Reading:
Erzen, T. (2006) Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversion in the Ex-Gay Movement.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lauder, M. A. (2003) Covert participant observation of a deviant community: Justifying the use
of deception. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 18:2, 185-196.
Jenkins, T. (1999) Religion in English Everyday Life. New York: Berghahn Books.
(eds.) Bromley, D. & Carter, L. (2001) Toward Reflexive Ethnography: Participating, Observing,
Narrating (Religion and the Social Order). Oxford: JAI Press
(eds.) Scharen, C. & Vigen, A.M. (2011) Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics. London:
T&T Clark.
Nelson, T. (2005) Every Time I Feel the Spirit: Religious Experience and Ritual in an African-
American Church. New York: New York University Press.
Nesbitt, E. (1998) British, Asian and Hindu: Identity, self-narration and the ethnographic
interview. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 19:2, 189-200.
----- (1998) Bridging the gap between young peoples experience of their religious traditions at
home and school: the contribution of ethnographic research. British Journal of Religious
Education, 20:2, 102-14.
----- (2004) Intercultural Education: Ethnographic and Religious Approaches. Lewes?: Sussex
Academic Press.
stberg, S. (2003) Pakistani Children in Norway: Islamic Nurture in a Secular Context. Leeds:
Community Religions Project.
Snow, D. (2010) A team field study of the appeal of megachurches Identifying, framing, and
solving personal issues, Ethnography, 11(1), 165 - 188.