Abstracts

Jane Cameron, PhD Candidate, University of Edinburgh: Visualising Buddhism in India: Contesting Categories in the Field
As part of my recent research exploring the Ambedkar–led Buddhist movement in India, I conducted an experimental photography project, which aimed to enable individuals to communicate their experience, or construction, of ‘Buddhism’. Using the constructed category of ‘religion’ in controlled verbal only interviews presents the problem of asking questions about concepts that are not grounded in the everyday experiences of individuals. ‘Breaking the ethnographer’s frames’ (Jeffrey Samuels (2004); Douglas Harper (2002)) through the use of auto-driven photo elicitation interviews served to challenge assumed categories. This paper assesses an alternative approach to studying ‘religion’ in India, which confronts the (problematic) constructed category of ‘religion’ that underlies the theories and methodologies employed within the field of religious studies.

Janet Eccles, PhD Candidate, Lancaster University: Strictly within limits: the pitfalls and possibilities of a local interview-based study
If, as Brown (2003), among others, argues, we now understand religiosity as something that is composed of characteristics and categories which are not countable, one very useful task for the sociologist of religion is to enquire into how such uncountable expressions of  religion and spirituality are both made manifest and how they may be subject to change. My particular research interest is to map some of these expressions among women who were brought up as Christian but who have also lived through the cultural revolution of the sixties, a time of considerable social and cultural upheaval. Despite the enormous scope of the topic, I have had to limit myself, as a single part-time, self-funded investigator, to an interview-based study of 70 women in South Lakeland, the area where I live. I invited each participant to tell me something of her religious and spiritual journey up to the present time, only asking specific questions in the interests of clarity or furthering the conversation, to allow each one to tell her own story with minimum interference from the researcher. This presentation will describe the challenges and triumphs of finding the range of types and numbers of participants I was seeking and discusses the difficulties of my own situatedness when interviewing participants ranging from fully committed lifelong churchgoers to self-identified atheists. Although there is considerable (and deliberate) diversity of religious and spiritual experiences, social class and type of churches encompassed, the study is not representative of the population as a whole. So to what extent can we make use of findings so derived? Yin (2003) has suggested that for case study research, one should generalise findings to theory, analogous to the way a scientist generalises from experimental results to theory. Thus my findings cannot claim actually to ‘test’ theory which would need larger qualitative and quantitative studies, but such work does begin to stake out ground previously uncharted and opens up the way for further research.

Brown, C. G. (2003). The Secularization Decade: What the 1960s have done to the Study of Religious History. In The Decline of Christianity in Western Europe, 1750-2000, ed. H. McLeod. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Yin, R. K. (2003). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA and London, Sage.

Saleem Khan, London Metropolitan University: Accommodation, Competition and Conflict: Sectarian Identity in Pakistan.
My PhD deals with intra-Muslim or Shia-Sunni relations in Pakistan. Sectarianism is more than just a variant of fundamentalism. So taking sectarian groups as ethnic groups, rival theories of identity construction and mobilization are applied which also have some shortcomings. As a political scientist I borrow much from anthropological theory regarding identity boundary construction however there is considerable resistance in political studies in using ethnography which potentially can help in answering questions such as why has sectarianism become a major source of internal conflict in Pakistan which is at odds with the secularization-modernization thesis.  Religion has been used by the state in Pakistan to bind competing regional identities but this has resulted in creating further divisions as there are many interpretations of Islam. Explaining sectarianism in Pakistan involves studying its local, regional, national and geo-political dimensions as well as a comparative analysis of ethno-religious conflicts elsewhere.

Lois Lee, PhD Candidate, Cambridge University:  How religious is non-religion? Non-believing and belonging in Modernity
My doctoral research looks at an under-researched phenomenon, non-religion. Non-religion is defined as that which is necessarily defined in reference to religion but which is not itself considered to be religion; examples are atheism, agnosticism, secularism, secularity and religious indifference. I argue that collectivism is an important feature of religion and my core research question (how religious is non-religion?) is therefore concerned with the forms of ideological and practical individualism and collectivism associated with non-religion. Using London as a case study of Modern society, my qualitative methodology involves in-depth interviews with non-religious people of two kinds - those involved in organised non-religion and those who are not. Other ethnographic methods include participant observation (where possible) and artefact collection and cataloguing. I am in my second year of research and the midst of data collecting.

Richard McCallum, PhD Candidate, Exeter University: Evangelical Christians, Muslims and the Public Sphere
My research is looking at the reaction of Evangelical Christians to the presence of Islam and Muslims in the British public sphere since 9/11.  My current focus is on a) the analysis of Evangelical public discourse and b) semi-structured fieldwork interviews with national Evangelical figures and church leaders in London.  The Evangelical ‘micro public sphere’ focused on Islam includes books, magazines, TV, radio, websites, blogs, forums and sermons.  Trying to catalogue, map and analyse it is a challenge!  I’m also interested in how this public sphere intersects with the Muslim and secular public spheres and am looking at how stories and events appear and are interpreted differently in various media.

Helen Purcell, PhD Candidate, Open University: Balancing The Narratives – a methodological approach to the emic and etic issues of being a Pagan Academic
This presentation is a discussion of the notion that narrative is created from the communication between different spaces, particularly, those of science and myth. These distinct areas of understanding produce distinct kinds of space, and narrative is generated as the pathway through and the link between them. As a practising Pagan and a research student, studying Pagans I have to develop the art of reconciling differing positional frameworks. In terms of emic/etic discourse I approach the difficulties that arise concerning my methodological approach, by being mindful that the narrative of my belief and the narrative of my intellectual detachment can only reach synthesis via continual reflexivity within the process, and continued response to feedback. The hermeneutical challenge then is to balance a personal narrative framework with an academic one.

Denise Ross, PhD Candidate, University of Birmingham: A study of the impact of missionaries among the Chin tribe in Myanmar
A handful of Assemblies of God missionaries entered Myanmar in the 1930’s and were forced to leave by the government in 1966.  The Chin tribe never received foreign Assemblies of God missionaries, but will be studied for aspects of the missionaries’ culture which may have been passed on second-hand.  This thesis will examine if the Assemblies of God is an indigenous movement?  How sensitive were the missionaries to the native culture?  How did the natives contextualize their theology?  How much of an influence does their former Chin religion have in the church today?  Did the new converts reject aspects of Chin culture on conversion? Both theological and anthropological methodologies will be used.  Through an ethnographic study of the culture, suggestions will be made for a more contextual approach to theologising.  A suitable model of contextual theology will be sought.  A multi-lens approach will involve researching missionary archives, interviewing missionaries, native leaders, congregation members and locals from the Chin community who are outside the Assemblies of God movement. 

Anna Stewart, PhD Candidate, University of Sussex: Fieldwork and the network: Contextualising online religion.
The interactive spaces of the internet present new avenues for expression to members of religious communities, and new fields for religious research. However, the disembodied and heterogeneous nature of online communications can create methodological challenges for researchers seeking to understand their roots in and implications for broader religious contexts. Utilising insights gained from ongoing research into gender and evangelical communication online, I suggest that a focus on cultural practices associated with language and mediation can provide researchers with a means through which to weave research in online and offline religious settings into an overarching ethnography of the network.

Ingrid Storm, PhD Candidate, University of Manchester: Using survey data to identify and construct measures of religiosity.
Using data from the last 2008 wave of the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) and International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), this research explores associations between different forms of religious and national identities in Britain, and whether these identifications can be perceived as responding to insecurity and threat. An important methodological issue that has emerged during the preliminary analysis concerns the identification of underlying dimensions of religiosity and the construction of scales to measure these. In order to test theoretical hypotheses it may be necessary to define some variable constructs a priori. However, this must be balanced against the associations that can be empirically observed in the data. The potential conflict between theory-driven and data-driven research can be resolved by using factor analysis in order to test which variables are empirically associated with one another. Indices measuring different dimensions of religiosity and national identity to be employed in subsequent multivariate analysis can then be constructed based on the variables which have the greatest variance and effects.