Reflexive ethnography as a tool in researching Hungarian Krishna devotees reflections on the margin of a long-term fieldwork among the Hungarian Community of Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math

Vol.10,No.2(2012)

Nóra Bodosi-Kocsis

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/127319

PDF
Abstract
The paper deals with some aspects of reflexive fieldwork by analysing the author's Couchsurfing experience in Brno during the workshop "Towards a Symmetrical Approach: The Study of Religions after Postmodern and Postcolonial Criticism". The experience is interpreted as a field situation and the author is regarded as an ethnographer. The author's modes and codes of behaviour are being scrutinized in a reflexive way. The situation and its reflexive analysis can throw light upon certain modes of fieldwork practices which stayed unnoticed during real field situations among a certain group of Hungarian Krishna devotees; the Hungarian Community of Sri Chaitnya Saraswat Math. Making these actions of the researcher conscious may help producing more honest and sensitive ethnographies and may offer a deeper insight into the complex nature of ethnographic fieldwork. In addition, the experience can be useful in my research among Krishna devotees.

Keywords:
Krishna devotees; reflexive ethnography; fieldwork; postmodern; cultural anthropology

Pages:
49–55
References

Clifford, J. & Marcus, G. E (Eds.) (1988). Writing Culture: Towards the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Crapanzano, V. (1980). Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago – London: The University of Chicago Press.

Davies, C. A. (1999). Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. London: Routledge.

Geertz, C. (1973). Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. In Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (pp. 3–30). New York: Basic Books.

Geertz, C. (1988). Works and Lives. The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Kocsis N. (2004). Krishna in Heroes Square: Devotees of Krishna and National Identity in Post-Communist Hungary. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 19/3, 329–337. | DOI 10.1080/1353790042000266345

Kocsis N. (2006). Devoting Krishna in a Hungarian Way: Religious and National Identity in the Hungarian Bráhmana Mission: A Case Study. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 51, 105–117. | DOI 10.1556/AEthn.51.2006.1-2.7

Rosaldo, R. (1993). Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. London: Routledge.

Couchsurfing. (2013). http://www.couchsurfing.org.

Metrics

872

Views

0

PDF views

PDF