Claiming the Researcher’s Identity
Anthropological Research and Politicized Religion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v6i2.168Keywords:
Islam, Netherlands, religious organizations, social work, students, youthAbstract
In this chapter we will discuss the consequences for doing research in the case of a topic and field that has become subject to intense public debate. In three cases involving research on Islam and Muslims we will take up questions pertaining to inter-subjectivity, and show how research on public issues, the relation between the worldviews of informants and those of the researcher, and processes of inclusion and exclusion during fieldwork are influenced by the politicization of Islam. We show how sudden changes in the societal context influence local identifications and allegiances. In our cases these changes produced a politicization of the field which, in turn led to the construction of the researchers as ‘natives’ by the informants. We argue that a reflection on this construction is necessary in order to better analyse processes of signification among informants and render a more adequate representation of the researched.
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References
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Stolcke, Verena. 1995. “Talking Culture: New Boundaries, New Rhetorics of Exclusion in Europe,” Current Anthropology, 36.1, 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/204339
Stoltenberg M., L. Terje, D. Kjersti, Irgens. 1997. “Birth Defects and Parental Consanguinity in Norway,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 145.5, 439–48.
Storms, Oka, and Edien Bartels. 2008. De keuze van een huwelijkspartner. Een studie naar partnerkeuze onder groepen Amsterdammers. Onderzoeksrapport. Vrije Universiteit, Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen, Afdeling Sociale en Culturele Antropologie. (The choice of a marriage partner. Research to partner choice under groups of Amsterdam people). (VU university, department of Cultural and Social Anthropology). Amsterdam. http://www.fsw.vu.nl/nl/Images/huwelijkenamsterdam%20Spdf_tcm30-60514.pdf Accessed 13 October, 2010
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Wright, Susan. 1998. “The Politicization of ‘Culture’,” Anthropology Today, 14.1, 7–15.
Yip, Andrew K. T. 2005. “Religion and the Politics of Spirituality/Sexuality,” Fieldwork in Religion, 1.3, 271–89.
Arendell, Terry. 1997. “Reflections on the Researcher-Researched Relationship: A Woman Interviewing Men,” Qualitative Sociology, 20.3, 341–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/ A:1024727316052
Asad, T. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Cultural Memory in the Present). New York: Cambridge University Press.
—2006. “Trying to Understand French Secularism,” in H. De Vries, ed. Political Theologies. New York: Fordham University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.5422/fso/9780823226443. 003.0026
Bartels, Edien. 2000. “ ‘Dutch Islam’: Young People, Learning and Integration,” Current Sociology, 48.4, 59–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011392100048004006
Bartels, Edien. 2003. “Medical Ethics and Rites Involving Blood,” Anthropology and Medicine, 10.1, 105–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13648470301270
Bennett R. L., A. G. Motulsky, A. Bittles, L. Hudgins, S. Uhrich, Doyle D. Lochner. 2006. “Genetic Counselling and Screening of Consanguineous Couples and their Offspring. Recommendations of the Nationale Society of Genetic Counselors,” Genet Couns 11, 97– 119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1014593404915
Calhoun, Craig. 2009. “Social Science for Public Knowledge,” Transformations of the Public Sphere. http://publicsphere.ssrc.org/calhoun-social-science-for-public-knowledge/. Accessed 13 January, 2010
Clifford, J. 1997. “Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology,” in Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, eds. Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 185– 222.
Cohen, Jeffrey H. 2000. “Problems in the Field: Participant Observation and the Assumption of Neutrality,” Field Methods, 12.4, 316–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1525822X0001200404
Davies, Charlotte A. 1999. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. New York: Routledge.
Drury, John, and Clifford Stott. 2001. “Bias as a Research Strategy in Participant Observation: The Case of Intergroup Conflict,” Field Methods, 13.1, 47–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 1525822X0101300103
Emerson, Robert M. 2009. “Ethnography, Interaction and Ordinary Trouble,” Ethnography, 10, 535–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1466138109346996
Gerritsen, J. W., and G. de Vries. 1994. “Hinderkracht en ondernemerschap. Een historische sociologie van sociale problemen,” Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, 21.2, 3–29.
Ghorashi, Halleh. 2001. Ways to Survive, Battles to Win Iranian Women Exiles in the Netherlands and the US. Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen.
Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1997. Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field of Science. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Hayden, Bridget. 2009. “Displacing the Subject: A Dialogical Understanding of the Researching Self,” Anthropological Theory, 9, 81–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 1463499609103548
Jackson, Michael. 1998. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project. Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press.
Johnson, Jeffrey C., Christine Avenarius and Jack Weatherford. 2006. “The Active ParticipantObserver: Applying Social Role Analysis to Participant Observation,” Field Methods, 18.2, 111–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1525822X05285928
Ketner, Susan L., Marjo Buitelaar and Harke Bosma. 2004. “Identity Strategies among Adolescent Girls of Moroccan Descent in the Netherlands,” Identity: An International Journal of the Theory and Research, 4.2, 145–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s1532706xid0402_3
Koning, Danielle. 2005. “Encounter of Islam and Science. Religious Beliefs and Academic Education among Muslim Students in Amsterdam.” MA thesis, VU University Amsterdam.
—2006. “Anti-evolutionism among Muslim Students,” ISIM Review, 18, 48–49.
Koning, Martijn de. 2008. Zoeken naar een ‘zuivere’ islam. Geloofsbeleving en identiteitsvorming van jonge Marokkaans-Nederlandse moslims. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
—2009. “Changing Worldviews and Friendship. An Exploration of the Life Stories of Two Female Salafists in the Netherlands,” in Roel Meijer, ed. Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement. London: Hurst, 372–92
Koning, Martijn de, and Edien Bartels. 2006. “For Allah and Myself. Religion and Moroccan Youth in The Netherlands,” in P. H. F Bos and W. Fritschy, eds. Morocco and The Netherlands: Society, Economy, Culture. Amsterdam: VU Publishers, 146–56
McCorkel, Jill A., and Kirsten Myers. 2003. “What Difference Does Difference Make? Position and Privilege in the Field,” Qualitative Sociology, 26.2, 199–231. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1023/A:1022967012774
Narayan, K. 1993. “How Native is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist?” American Anthropologist, 95.3, 671–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/aa.1993.95.3.02a00070
Reis, Ria. 1998. “Resonating to Pain: Introspection as a Tool in Medical Anthropology ‘at home’,” Anthropology & Medicine, 5, 295–309. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13648470.1998.9964565
Roeland, Johan. 2009. Selfation: Dutch Evangelical Youth between Subjectivization and Subjection. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.5117/9789085550198
Scholten, Peter, and Ronald Holzhacker. 2009. “Bonding, Bridging and Ethnic Minorities in the Netherlands: Changing Discourses in a Changing Nation,” Nations and Nationalism, 15.1, 81–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8129.2009.00350.x
Sniderman, Paul M., and Louk Hagendoorn. 2007. When Ways of Life Collide. Multiculturalism and its Discontents in the Netherlands. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stewart, Charles. 2001. “Secularism as an Impediment to Anthropological Research,” Social Anthropology, 9.3, 325–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2001.tb00157.x
Stolcke, Verena. 1995. “Talking Culture: New Boundaries, New Rhetorics of Exclusion in Europe,” Current Anthropology, 36.1, 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/204339
Stoltenberg M., L. Terje, D. Kjersti, Irgens. 1997. “Birth Defects and Parental Consanguinity in Norway,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 145.5, 439–48.
Storms, Oka, and Edien Bartels. 2008. De keuze van een huwelijkspartner. Een studie naar partnerkeuze onder groepen Amsterdammers. Onderzoeksrapport. Vrije Universiteit, Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen, Afdeling Sociale en Culturele Antropologie. (The choice of a marriage partner. Research to partner choice under groups of Amsterdam people). (VU university, department of Cultural and Social Anthropology). Amsterdam. http://www.fsw.vu.nl/nl/Images/huwelijkenamsterdam%20Spdf_tcm30-60514.pdf Accessed 13 October, 2010
Tonkens, Evelien, Menno Hurenkamp and Jan Willem Duyvendak. 2008. Culturalization of Citizenship in the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR). http://www.assr.nl/conferences/documents/StaffsempaperTonkens41108.pdf.
Vliegenthart, Rens. 2007. Framing Immigration and Integration: Facts, Parliament, Media and AntiImmigrant Party Support in the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Wright, Susan. 1998. “The Politicization of ‘Culture’,” Anthropology Today, 14.1, 7–15.
Yip, Andrew K. T. 2005. “Religion and the Politics of Spirituality/Sexuality,” Fieldwork in Religion, 1.3, 271–89.
Published
2012-04-04
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
de Koning, M., Bartels, E., & Koning, D. (2012). Claiming the Researcher’s Identity: Anthropological Research and Politicized Religion. Fieldwork in Religion, 6(2), 168-186. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v6i2.168
