research

Research		click to return home

Introducing my research interests and saying something about methods, especially “guesthood”. Also introducing my research students

As my publication list shows, I'm interested in a number of different religions. I've written more about some than about others, but I've taught more courses about some than about others. My next research project is “under development” and I'll say no more about it until I know if it will receive funding or not. If it does, I'll post information about my plans. If my application for funding gets rejected, I'll need to revise my ideas!

Research interests

I've done research among Jews, Pagans, indigenous people, and a variety of other religious groups and individuals. Follow the links below for brief descriptions of my interests and outputs so far, and for some hints about future plans.

	Judaism

	Paganism

	Indigenous religious traditions

	Animism and shamanism

	Satanism

I'm also intrigued by what these and other religious people and practices have in common. The academic discipline in which I work - the Study of Religions - is not all about describing religions. It may be fun to collect "facts" that might help you win a pub quiz or trivia game, but that's not what academia is supposed to be about. It is interested in critical questions. Sometimes these aren't the same questions that other people (or other academics) ask. Sometimes they approach questions that other people ask, but in different ways.

Raising questions is the most interesting thing that academics do. And these questions are most interesting when they force us to reconsider what we would otherwise take for granted. It can be appallingly tedious to read what some scholars dislike about other people and their activities and practices. Happily, not too many of us are still convinced by the old claims about "objectivity". But many of us are still unsure about how we might engage with other people (other-than-scholars, or other-than-our-own-cultural-group, etc.).

Guesthood

To cut to the main point: my experience of trying to learn to be a guest among indigenous people (many of whom have clear protocols for making guests) has made me think that academics have a lot to learn from the many generous communities who put up with us and our questioning. I've concluded that being a guest is much more respectful than earlier ways of being a researcher - including "participant observation".

(What's wrong with this is that usually academics only think of themselves as “participants” when they are “in the field”, when something is happening, or when they are trying to get information out of people or events. They think they can step back into the distance when they are writing up their notes and books and lectures. In this and other ways they privilege“observation” and treat “participation” as a temporary methodological phase we all have to go through. If so, its another example of the dualism of Western, modern, post-Enlightenment culture.)		Some academics think we should be “methodological atheists”. With Doug Ezzy, I prefer the notion of “methodological agnosticism” but wonder whether we might try to be “methodological polytheists”. The difficulty is that few Westerners understand what it is like to be a polytheist.

Not only is guesthood more respectful to our hosts, it is also a much better way of achieving what researchers set out to do.

For more “guesthood” and what it means to be a guest ... click here

Introducing my research students (past and present)

Click here for a page devoted to the exciting and important research of my research students