Ethnography of Religious Instants: Multi-Sited Ethnography and the Idea of “Third Spaces”

Abstract

Attempts to understand contemporary religious practice, and its associated communities and identities, must take into consideration the way that these phenomena exist in both virtual and physical spaces, as well as the way that, in some instances, religion bridges or erases this dichotomy. The approach here focuses on those forms of religious practice that do not fit easily into one or the other type of space. Starting with existing discussions of ethnographic methodologies for studying religious practice and the growing literature on how to study "digital religion", we examine the methodological needs for studying "third spaces", the hybrid, in-between spaces of religious practice. The model presented here is one of simultaneous and collaborative ethnography that extends shared methods across the virtual and the actual dimensions as the most productive approach to this type of research. Using tailored research methods and techniques within this approach offers the opportunity to consider ways in which behaviors, interactions, and speech acts that happen within this event are continuous or discontinuous with each other. It also offers insight into the dynamics of "shared experience" and how perspectives are or are not shared within these multiple dimensions. OPEN ACCESSReligions 2015, 6 989

Accessing Archives: Teaching with Primary Sources in K–12 Classrooms

“…28 The emphasis on practices requires that the study focus on "real-life human behavior" "to gain a unique understanding of the context and thought that informs such behavior." 29 Thus, archival ethnography is a suitable methodology for a study of the unstated norms and practices of teachers and their relationship to the archival processes undertaken as part of classroom instruction, such as locating primary sources for lesson planning.…”

“…One main participant was a second grade teacher, and two others participated occasionally: a fourth grade teacher and a school librarian. According to Julian Murchison, 30 participant observation can be used to open "avenues to important types of information hard to obtain or access." To obtain implicit experience-based information unique to the education profession and the context of teaching with primary sources, the researcher developed relationships with the teachers and the school librarian over an academic year by regularly participating in the planning of primary source-based student exercises, adhering to classroom norms and schedules, and attending weekly curriculum meetings.…”

Making Sense of Change: Methodological Approaches to Societies in Transformation—An Introduction

“…In contrast, ethnography has long been established in social science approaches to the study of religion, in research on contemporary religious communities and other forms of religiosity, now also including multi-sited ethnography for the study of the "digital and multisited dimensions of contemporary religious practices" (Murchison and Coats 2015, 989). The study of religious change or "religion in process" with its "fleeting, ephemeral, and impermanent" aspects including digital data especially calls for adapted ethnographic methods (Murchison andCoats 2015, 1001).…”

Doing digital team ethnography: being there together and digital social data

“…Due to the lack of ethnographic teamwork in the digital realm, the examples provided here are not exclusive to this context. The few digital ethnographic projects found that included teamwork did not contain a great amount of detail regarding how the research was undertaken (Fields and Kafai, 2009; Murchison and Coats, 2015).…”