The Experience of Ethnographic Fieldwork in an English Benedictine Monastery
Or, Not Playing at Being a Monk
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v5i2.221Keywords:
Catholicism, ethnography, hospitality, monasticism, participation, silence, workAbstract
What is the role of imitation in ethnographic fieldwork, and what are its limits? This article explores what it means to participate in a particular fieldsite; a Catholic English Benedictine monastery. A discussion of the importance of hospitality in the life of the monastery shows how the guest becomes a point of contact between the community and the wider society within which that community exists. The peripheral participation of the ethnographer as monastic guest is not about becoming incorporated, but about creating a space within which knowledge can be communicated. By focusing on the process of re-learning in the monastery – in particular, relearning how to experience silence and work – I discuss some of the ways in which the fieldwork experience helped me to reassess the social world to which I would return.
Downloads
References
Cook, J. 2010. “Ascetic Practice and Participant Observation, or, the Gift of Doubt in Field Experience,” in James Davies and Dimitrina Spencer eds. Emotions in the Field: The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 239–65.
Fortin, John R. 2003. “The Reaffirmation of Monastic Hospitality,” Downside Review, 121.423, 105–18.
Foster, David. 2005. Reading with God: Lectio Divina. London: Continuum.
Grimshaw, Anna. 1992. Servants of the Buddha: Winter in a Himalayan Convent. London: Open Letters.
Herzfeld, Michael. 2004. The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Irvine, R. D. G. 2010. "How to Read: Lectio Divina in an English Benedictine Monastery," Culture and Religion, 11.4, 395–411. doi:10.1080/14755610.2010.527614
Jones, Martin. 2007. Feast: Why Humans Share Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seasoltz, R. Kevin. 1974. “Monastic Hospitality,” American Benedictine Review, 25.4, 427–51.
Shackley, Myra. “Accomodating the Spiritual Tourist: The Case of Religious Retreat Houses,” in R. Thomas ed. Small Firms in Tourism: International Perspectives. Oxford: Elsevier, 2004: 225–38.
Sorg, Rembert. 1951. Towards a Benedictine Theology of Manual Labor. Lisle, IL: Benedictine Orient.
Tambiah, S. J., 1970. Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-east Thailand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wichroski, Mary Anne. 1997. “Breaking Silence: Some Fieldwork Strategies in Cloistered and Non-Cloistered Communities,” in R. Hertz ed. Reflexivity and Voice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 265–82.
Yeo, Richard. 1982. The Structure and Content of Monastic Profession: A Juridical Study, with Particular Regard to the Practice of the English Benedictine Congregation since the French Revolution. Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo.
