Abstract
Methodological difficulties attendant to ethnographic fieldwork—such as gaining access, maintaining fieldwork relations, objectivity, and fieldwork stresses—are intensified for researchers working with “absolutist” religious group, groups that hold an exclusivist or totalistic definition of truth. Based on my fieldwork in a conservative South Korean evangelical community, I explore in this article two central and related methodological dilemmas pertaining to studying absolutist religious groups: identity negotiation and emotional management during fieldwork. Writing from my complex location as a feminist and a cultural/religious insider/outsider in relation to the South Korean evangelical community, I explore in particular the challenges posed by identity/role management in the field and its emotional dimensions, including the issue of the researcher’s power and vulnerability, the quandary of “conformity,” and the emotional costs of self-repression arising from the researcher’s fundamental value conflicts with the group. I conclude with a reflection on the implications of these experiences for ethnographic methodology, most centrally, how we manage our emotional responses in the field, including “inappropriate” ones, and how we can relate them to the research process.
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Notes
I am using the term “absolutist” to mainly denote the ideological dimension of a group’s position (Peshkin 1984, 1986); although a group may believe its belief system to be the only truth, the group can be highly conversionist and proselytizing, such as evangelical Christians. In writings on various types of “absolutist” groups, both religious and non-religious, other related terms have been employed. Based on her study of the women of the American New Right, Rebecca E. Klatch (1988), for example, uses the term “political resistant community” to refer to groups holding “extreme” political ideology that are resistant to those outside its borders, and hold worldviews that are at odds with the researcher’s own views. David Gordon uses the term “proselytizing group” to refer to the group he has studied, the Jesus People. Esseveld and Eyerman (1992) use the phrase “distasteful movement” as an umbrella term to refer to communities with which the researcher has fundamental value conflicts, though this term does not denote a value judgment of the group being studied as being tasteful or distasteful in any objective sense.
Such challenges are, of course, magnified for other types of “closed” subcultural communities as well, such as prisons, police, gangs, hospitals, etc., although the challenges posed by studying each such community has its own unique challenges.
Together with Catholics, estimated to comprise about one third of the Christian population, Christianity as a whole is the largest religious group in South Korea (Gallup Korea 1998).
In South Korea, Christians have the highest levels of education and income as compared to all other religious groups and to the general population (Gallup Korea 1998, p. 156).
For example, although a few of the major denominations have moved to ordain women in recent years, the majority of Protestant denominations in South Korea still do not ordain women. Although women are granted a small measure of authority in many churches, especially through lower-level lay positions as deacons and cell-leaders, women are excluded from structures of decision-making and power in general (Yi 1985).
See Chong (2008) for a full discussion of the findings.
I am very much in agreement with Shaffir (1991) that “…successful entry to the research setting, and securing the requisite cooperation to proceed with the study, depend less on the execution of any scientific canons of research than upon the researcher’s ability to engage in sociable behavior that respects the cultural world of his or her hosts (p. 73).”
In their article, Robbins et al. (1973) describe a case in which one of the authors, Dick Anthony, was forced to terminate prematurely his research with the Christian World Liberation Front at UC Berkeley because of difficult tensions that developed between the author and the group in the course of his research. Anthony, though open with the group about who he was and about his research goals, chose not to discuss his personal religious beliefs with his subjects. At first defined as a potential convert, considerable tensions developed between Anthony and the group when the expected conversion of Anthony did not materialize. Examples such as this bring up the issue of whether one can fruitfully conduct long-term research with religious groups. Other researchers (Richardson et al. 1979) have claimed, however, that if one is open about one’s religious views, even if those views conflict with the views of the group, this can actually help to win trust.
In most cases, the women seemed comfortable in opening themselves up. To my surprise, many even said they found conversations with me enjoyable, even cathartic; many interviewees thanked me for offering a chance to reflect on their lives and unload their troubles without having to worry about social repercussions.
Hammersely and Atkins (1995) also discuss how sometimes the fieldworker may find him or herself being “tested” and pushed towards disclosure, particularly when the group or culture in question is founded upon religious beliefs and commitments. They state: “Here the process of negotiating access and rapport may be a matter of progressive initiation. The fieldworkers may find the management of disclosure a particularly crucial feature of this delicate procedure (p. 92).”
Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) note, for instance, while a researcher must decide how much self-disclosure would be appropriate within the bounds of ethical behavior, the researcher often has to suppress or play down one’s own personal beliefs, commitments, and political sympathies. But this is not necessarily a matter of gross deception, but “normal requirements of fact, courtesy, and ‘interaction ritual’” (p. 91).
In Jaggar’s (1989) discussion of epistemic value of emotions, emotions such as “feminist anger” (feminist emotions are those that incorporate feminist perception and values) are often viewed in our society as “outlaw emotions,” “emotions that are distinguished by their incompatibility with the dominant perceptions and values” (p. 160).
Furthermore, it has been pointed out that the proliferation of methodologies based on “rapport” and “empathy” often draw upon research on groups that scholars find “conducive, whimsical, or at least unthreatening” rather than upon groups that are actively hostile or frightening (Blee 1998; Fielding 1993).
Kleinman and Copp (1993) make an interesting observation that we need to be mindful of the costs of “feeling good” as well “feeling bad.” Researchers are likely to feel most comfortable when they like participants and participants like them. However, it is when relations are smooth and we think we have achieved the right amount and kind of empathic feelings that we need to be the most alert about the analytical import of our feelings (p. 46). That is, “good” feelings must also become tools for analysis, because by interrogating why one feels this way, this can tell us a great deal about the researcher-researched dynamics.
See Alison M. Jaggar’s article (1989) for an enlightening discussion on the value of human emotions to knowledge. In her discussion of the “epistemic potential of emotion,” Jaggar adds that “Accepting the indispensability of emotions to knowledge means no more (and no less) than that discordant emotions should be attended to seriously and respectfully rather than condemned, ignored, or suppressed (p. 163).”
At this juncture, it is important to note that these efforts to embrace subjectivity and reflexivity—“being aware of how one’s social background influences and shapes one’s beliefs, and how this self-awareness pertains to what and how one observes, attributes meaning, and interprets action and dialogues with one’s informants”—do not necessarily constitute a panacea for the difficult problem of “objectivity.” As some scholars have demonstrated (see Wasserfall 1993), the researcher’s best reflexive efforts, especially when dealing with absolutist- or exclusivist-type groups or subcultures, may not necessarily lead to the total elimination of one’s moral resistance against beliefs with which one is fundamentally at odds. More generally, as Daphne Patai (1991, p. 149) observes, although all self-respecting ethnographers today feel the need to pay homage to “reflexivity,” doing so does not necessarily resolve the problem; instead, she says, “researchers in today’s culture of self-reflexivity often engage in merely rhetorical maneuvers that are rapidly acquiring the status of incantations.”
Furthermore, I believe that one need not necessarily be in agreement with all the beliefs of the participants, nor need to act as if one is, to achieve empathetic connection with the group and understanding.
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Chong, K.H. Coping with Conflict, Confronting Resistance: Fieldwork Emotions and Identity Management in a South Korean Evangelical Community. Qual Sociol 31, 369–390 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-008-9114-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-008-9114-0