Observant participant: carnal sociology and researcher identity in religious educational spaces.

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Observant participant: carnal sociology and researcher identity in religious educational spaces.
Authors: LeBlanc, Robert Jean1 robert.leblanc@uleth.ca
Source: Ethnography & Education. Apr2019, Vol. 14 Issue 2, p242-257. 16p.
Subject Terms: *Education research, *Religious schools, *Catholic schools, *Religious education, Scientific observation, Sociology
Geographic Terms: United States
Abstract: The ethnographer's embodied action during research is a complex of habit, belief, social and institutional positioning, and intention. This article examines what urban anthropologist Wacqaunt calls 'carnal sociology' and considers its implications for ethnographers of religious educational spaces. Contemporary ethnographers of education have renewed their interest in religious educational spaces—religious schools, houses of worship, public festivals. In conducting research in the field of religious education, ethnographers often cross familiar and unfamiliar boundaries, engaging in forms of participant observation and practice beyond their own religious categories: we research in religious spaces and with religious communities different from our own commitments. Drawing on interactional data from a multi-year ethnography of an urban Catholic school and parish in Philadelphia (USA), I consider how my own embodied participation in the religious rituals of the school and parish led to a reflexivity on practice, and initiated institutional and youth-driven social positioning in response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database: Education Research Complete
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