Re-visiting the Participating Observer

For me, during the week that we studied Ritual, the “scholar” became the “subject.” As I put it then: “This week, I have begun to wonder more about the observer than the observed” and as I re-visit the questions that I ask in that blog, I am again struck with the possibility that these two categories of people, in certain situations, can be accurately and simultaneously applied to a single individual. I ask(ed): Is it always possible to distinguish between an observer and a participant? Can one be both at the same time? If so, what would such a position look like? What kind(s) of scholarship would this position produce? Can responsible observers risk excluding themselves from all forms of meaningful participation? Moreover, can responsible participants risk excluding themselves from all forms of meaningful observation? If not, how do they negotiate the space to observe and participate meaningfully?

“The Abominations of Anthropology” and “‘But Are They Really Christian?’” strike me as meditations on these same questions. Throughout each of these pieces, Simon Coleman paints a picture of anthropological/ethnographical tasks and the ways in which they consistently grapple with both defining and establishing boundary lines between the observer and the observed. Many of these issues revolve more specifically around describing what territory or attitudes belong to which category and what I particularly like about this aspect of Coleman’s examination is how it highlights the problematic elements of such attempts at neat categorization.

Perhaps of all of the “case studies” presented by Coleman, Susan Harding’s experience in studying “unsympathetic” varieties of Christian fundamentalists (relayed in “The Abominations…”) fascinates me most. There was something spooky about her run-in with “the Baptist tongue,” something encouraging about her assertion that it was worth studying and something thought provoking about the wider academic community’s response. As Coleman notes, “Christian fundamentalists often constitute an area of ethnographic taboo, a decidedly ‘repugnant cultural other’, in the eyes of fieldworkers” (“The Abominations…” 42, 47). How did this come to be? Why?

I think that Coleman offers several reasons, but the ones that interest me most derive from two questions that he poses regarding the relationship between the observer and the observed. He asks, “[W]hat happens when the field is located epistemologically very close to home? What do we risk when we attempt to gain proximity to a religious ‘Other’ who already has a well-defined identity within arenas of public discourse that surround us in our everyday lives?” (“The Abominations…” 43). Phrases like, “very close to home,” “arenas of public discourse that surround us” in combination with questions like, “[W]hat happens…?” and “What do we risk?” effectively communicate an anxiety that originates out of spatial and temporal connections with an “Other.” If this interpretation is vaild, is it possible to paraphrase what Coleman is asking here by in turn asking, “what do observers do when the ones being observed transcend the bounds of what has traditionally differentiated ‘them’ from ‘us’?” And if it is possible, then what do observers do exactly? Is the answer(s) to this question obvious or not? To what extent do observers already know how to cope with the fact that there might not be “a fundamental social, cultural, and analytical divide between ‘the field’ and ‘home’” (“‘But Are They Really Christian?’”…77)?

And (perhaps as always) I find myself wondering what role language plays in this process exactly. Coleman says an awful lot about evangelical vernacular and its relationship to the discourse of anthropology. I have not yet been able to think (or thoroughly understand) as much about all of it as I would like to, but I can say that for every fascinating thing that he has said, what I keep returning to is his convicting assertion that spoken or written language has unjustifiably been prioritized over other forms of communication (“The Abominations…” 52). Assuming that words alone can truthfully or legitimately convey “religious commitment” is a habit that needs to be broken both by conservative Protestants and anthropologists, as far as Coleman is concerned (“The Abominations…” 52). I think that this is an interesting point, but how might seriously adopting this view practically effect scholasticism and the anthropologist’s/ethnographer’s task? How exactly should/would the “non-verbal” be re-integrated back into academic “vocabulary,” as Coleman suggests that it should (“The Abominations…” 52)?

I am attracted to the idea that language can somehow be embodied, that “body-language” is not only a legitimate source of study but also a valid form of communication (“The Abominations…” 52). Ideas like this one prompt me to ask how very physical manifestations of religious experience, like the stigmata, liturgical dance or the Eucharist, for example, are attempting to articulate something specific about religious experience without employing a spoken or verbal language. What is being embodied in these instances and how do we know? How do these messages show themselves to be trustworthy independent of spoken or verbal communication? And, what exactly does Coleman mean when he says that “distinctions between truthful propositions and bodily disciplines begin to break down when we see how charismatic language ideology is translated into specific forms of action relating to words” (“The Abominations…” 52)? Can this statement be used to answer any of the above questions?