Anthropology and Religion Studies
A Personal and Academic Symbiosis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.39604Keywords:
Anthropology of religion, autoethnography, theory and methodology, fieldworkAbstract
This article is a reflexive account of the author's entry into the field of religionstudies through the discipline of anthropology. It is a frank accountof how the personal and the academic can intertwine, outlining how fieldwork,using an anthropological and experiential lens, can influence notonly the life of the researcher, but the content, theory and methodologyin publications. While earlier tertiary studies in religion centred aroundschools of divinity and/or theology, religion has moved beyond the strictboundaries of interpretations of texts and discussions of religion fromwithin a particular set of beliefs. The combination of the two major disciplines,(cultural) anthropology and religion, in a tertiary level curriculumare particularly pertinent to understanding the important links betweenculture and religious practices. The significant influences of other scholarsacross and beyond both disciplines are highlighted, along with theauthor's major publications.
References
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Coleman, Simon, and Pauline von Hellermann 2013 Multi-sited Ethnography. Taylor & Francis, London.
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Desjarlais, Robert 1992 Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Elkin, A. P. 1977 [1945] Aboriginal Men of High Degree. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia.
Greenwood, Susan 2005 The Nature of Magic: An Anthropology of Consciousness. Berg, Oxford.
forthcoming Developing Magical Consciousness: A Theoretical and Practical Guide to Expanding Perception. Routledge, London.
Harrison, Peter 2017 The Territories of Science and Religion. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Hazard, Sonia 2013 The Material Turn in the Study of Religion. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 4: 58–78.
Howes, David (ed.) 2005 Empire of the Senses. Berg, Oxford.
Hume, Lynne 1985 Making Lengwasa: A Women’s Pig-Killing Ritual on Maewo (Aurora), Vanuatu. Oceania 55: 272–87. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.1985.tb02093.x
1986 Church and Custom on Maewo, Vanuatu. Oceania 56: 304–313. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.1986.tb02154.x
1997 Witchcraft and Paganism in Australia. Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria.
2002 Ancestral Power: The Dreaming, Consciousness, and Aboriginal Australians. Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria.
2007 Portals: Opening Doorways to Other Realities through the Senses. Berg, Oxford and New York.
2013 The Religious Life of Dress: Global Fashion and Faith. Bloomsbury, London and New York.
2018 ‘Strumpets of the Worst Kind’. Boolarong Press, Brisbane.
Hume, Lynne, and Nevill Drury 2013 The Varieties of Magical Experience. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, California.
Hume, Lynne, and Jane Mulcock (eds) 2004 Anthropologists in the Field: Cases in Participant Observation. Columbia University Press, New York.
Husserl, Edmund 1972 [1913] Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Allen and Unwin, London.
Jackson, Michael 1989 Paths toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
James, William 1902 The Varieties of Religious Experience. Viking Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK.
Layard, John 1942 Stone Men of Malekula. Chatto & Windus, London.
Lévy-Bruhl, L. 1952 A Letter to E. E. Evans-Pritchard. British Journal of Sociology 3: 117–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/587489
Lewis-Williams, David 2002 The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. Thames & Hudson, London.
Marcus, George E. 1995 Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95–117. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.000523
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Noll, Richard 1985 Mental Imagery Cultivation as a Cultural Phenomenon: The Role of Visions in Shamanism. Current Anthropology 26(4): 443–61. https://doi.org/10.1086/203305
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Sacks, Jonathan 2011 The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning. Hodder & Stoughton, London.
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Stephen, Michele 1995 Aiaisa’s Gifts: A Study of Magic and the Self. University of California Press, Berkeley.
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Stoller, Paul 1997 Sensuous Scholarship. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
2008 The Power of the Between: An Anthropological Odyssey. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Stoller, Paul, and C. Olkes 1987 In Sorcery’s Shadow. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Strassman, Rick M. D. 2001 DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Park Street Press, Rochester, VT.
Turner, David H. 1997 After Life before Genesis: Accessing the Eternal through Australian Aboriginal Music. Peter Lang, New York.
2002 The Spirit Lives: A Personal Journey from Loss to Understanding through Religious Experience. Peter Lang, New York.
Turner, Edith 1993 The Reality of Spirits: A Tabooed or Permitted Field of Study? Anthropology of Consciousness 4(1): 9–13. https://doi.org/10.1525/ac.1993.4.1.9
Young, David, and Jean-Guy Goulet (eds) 1994 Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters. Broadview Press, Peterborough, Ontario.
Classen, Constance 2012 The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch. University of Illinois Press, Champaign.
Coleman, Simon, and Pauline von Hellermann 2013 Multi-sited Ethnography. Taylor & Francis, London.
Dalai Lama 2006 The Universe in a Single Atom: How Science and Spirituality Can Serve Our World. Little and Brown, London.
Damasio, Antonio 1999 The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Harcourt Brace & Company, New York.
d’Aquili, Eugene G., and Andrew B. Newberg 1999 The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. Fortress, Augsburg.
Deacon, Bernard 1934 Malekula: A Vanishing People in the New Hebrides. Routledge and Sons, London.
Desjarlais, Robert 1992 Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Elkin, A. P. 1977 [1945] Aboriginal Men of High Degree. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia.
Greenwood, Susan 2005 The Nature of Magic: An Anthropology of Consciousness. Berg, Oxford.
forthcoming Developing Magical Consciousness: A Theoretical and Practical Guide to Expanding Perception. Routledge, London.
Harrison, Peter 2017 The Territories of Science and Religion. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Hazard, Sonia 2013 The Material Turn in the Study of Religion. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 4: 58–78.
Howes, David (ed.) 2005 Empire of the Senses. Berg, Oxford.
Hume, Lynne 1985 Making Lengwasa: A Women’s Pig-Killing Ritual on Maewo (Aurora), Vanuatu. Oceania 55: 272–87. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.1985.tb02093.x
1986 Church and Custom on Maewo, Vanuatu. Oceania 56: 304–313. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.1986.tb02154.x
1997 Witchcraft and Paganism in Australia. Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria.
2002 Ancestral Power: The Dreaming, Consciousness, and Aboriginal Australians. Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria.
2007 Portals: Opening Doorways to Other Realities through the Senses. Berg, Oxford and New York.
2013 The Religious Life of Dress: Global Fashion and Faith. Bloomsbury, London and New York.
2018 ‘Strumpets of the Worst Kind’. Boolarong Press, Brisbane.
Hume, Lynne, and Nevill Drury 2013 The Varieties of Magical Experience. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, California.
Hume, Lynne, and Jane Mulcock (eds) 2004 Anthropologists in the Field: Cases in Participant Observation. Columbia University Press, New York.
Husserl, Edmund 1972 [1913] Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Allen and Unwin, London.
Jackson, Michael 1989 Paths toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
James, William 1902 The Varieties of Religious Experience. Viking Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK.
Layard, John 1942 Stone Men of Malekula. Chatto & Windus, London.
Lévy-Bruhl, L. 1952 A Letter to E. E. Evans-Pritchard. British Journal of Sociology 3: 117–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/587489
Lewis-Williams, David 2002 The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. Thames & Hudson, London.
Marcus, George E. 1995 Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95–117. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.000523
Myerhoff, Barbara, and Jay Ruby (eds) 1982 The Cracked Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Myers, Natasha 2015 Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter. Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London.
Newberg, Andrew, Eugene G. d’Aquili and Vince Rause 2002 Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. Ballantine Books, New York.
Noll, Richard 1985 Mental Imagery Cultivation as a Cultural Phenomenon: The Role of Visions in Shamanism. Current Anthropology 26(4): 443–61. https://doi.org/10.1086/203305
Roth, P. A. 1987 Meaning and Method in the Social Sciences: A Case for Methodological Pluralism. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Sacks, Jonathan 2011 The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning. Hodder & Stoughton, London.
Smart, Ninian 1983 Worldviews: Cross-cultural Explorations of Human Beliefs. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.
Stephen, Michele 1995 Aiaisa’s Gifts: A Study of Magic and the Self. University of California Press, Berkeley.
St John, Graham 2016 The DMT Gland: The Pineal, the Spirit Molecule, and Popular Culture. International Journal for the Study of New Religions 7(2): 153–74. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.v7i2.31949
Stoller, Paul 1997 Sensuous Scholarship. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
2008 The Power of the Between: An Anthropological Odyssey. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Stoller, Paul, and C. Olkes 1987 In Sorcery’s Shadow. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Strassman, Rick M. D. 2001 DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Park Street Press, Rochester, VT.
Turner, David H. 1997 After Life before Genesis: Accessing the Eternal through Australian Aboriginal Music. Peter Lang, New York.
2002 The Spirit Lives: A Personal Journey from Loss to Understanding through Religious Experience. Peter Lang, New York.
Turner, Edith 1993 The Reality of Spirits: A Tabooed or Permitted Field of Study? Anthropology of Consciousness 4(1): 9–13. https://doi.org/10.1525/ac.1993.4.1.9
Young, David, and Jean-Guy Goulet (eds) 1994 Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters. Broadview Press, Peterborough, Ontario.
Published
2020-01-24
Issue
Section
Articles
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Hume, L. (2020). Anthropology and Religion Studies: A Personal and Academic Symbiosis. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 32(2-3), 166-181. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.39604
