Researching New Religious Movements from the Inside Out and the Outside In

Abstract

Drawing on my own fieldwork experiences with the transnational Integral Yoga community, this essay offers some reflections on two possible approaches to bridging insider-outsider perspectives in the study of new religious movements. First, I consider Gerald Larson's suggestion of a “relationship of mutual reciprocity” between researcher and religious community. Second, I discuss the value of a participatory approach that attempts to integrate engaged participation with critical distance in the study of religion. I use my collaborative experience co-authoring an academic article on Sri Aurobindo and the contemporary yoga scene with an Integral Yoga practitioner to argue that while Larson's reciprocal enterprise risks either sacrificing critical concerns to apologetic agendas, or polarizing the insider as apologetic and the outsider as reductive, a participatory approach proposes a way to put insider-outsider perspectives into a more creative relation.

« Quand l’esprit ne peut sentir le corps » : dépasser le dualisme cartésien du corps-esprit avec la pratique du qigong

“…Once well isolated from their research subject through insurmountable linguistic, cultural and geographic barriers, anthropologists are increasingly faced with informants who read their work and "talk back." This occurs either by the informants taking on the role of the scholar themselves, as in the case of "closeted" scholar-practitioners of religious groups (Gleig, 2012), or as in the controversy surrounding Scheper-Hughes' classic ethnography on mental illness in rural Ireland, through overt accusation and conflict (Scheper-Hughes, 2001). This turns the ethical imperative to "represent them as they would represent themselves" (Good, 1994, p. 25) into a practical demand, forcing researchers to engage with recalcitrant counter-narratives and to involve informants in participatory and collaborative research.…”

Academic Freedom and the Future of Anthropology in India

“…It seemed to offend both Indian members of the Ashram and nonmember devotees, including a group of Indian devotees from Orissa who filed a writ petition in the High Court of Orissa in 2008 (Heehs ). The petitioners claimed that the book had misrepresented Sri Aurobindo's teachings and presented him in a bad light, consequently hurting the “Indian psyche” (Gleig ; Heehs ). The same year, the High Court of Orissa issued a temporary injunction against the publication of the book in India until the Home Ministry decided whether the book was “non‐objectionable” (Heehs ).…”

“…Several Indians held that the book was not offensive in any way, while several expatriate members of the Ashram were critical of Heehs and his work . Nevertheless, the petitioners against Heehs and the many blog articles denigrating his work, reflect chauvinistic religious nationalism, intolerant of anyone who they deem to have insulted their religion (see also Gleig ).…”