0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Embodied Knowledge
It is in the context of “joining in,” of being in the midst of social ac-
tivities enacted “in co-activity” with our hosts, that we suspend our
social conditioning. Doing so, we distance ourselves from an inter-
pretivist “conception of ethnography as observation” (Fabian 1979 b,
26 , emphasis in original). We also move beyond the “notion of eth-
nography as listening and speaking (rather than observing)” (Fabian
1979 b, 27 , emphasis in original).^4 To “move” with others, in associa-
tion with them, in the context of their activities is to engage in radical
participation in their world. Under such conditions, as demonstrated
again and again by contributors to this book, ethnographers do have
“sensory and mental knowledge of what is really happening around
and to them” (V. Turner 1985 , 205 , in Goulet 1994 a, 26 ).
In Religion and Modernity: Some Revisionary Views, Geertz ap-
pears to open the door to the kind of radical participation discussed
here as a mode of gaining entry into the world of our hosts whose re-
ligious views we wish to appreciate and understand.^5 In this recent
paper, Geertz notes that social scientists turned their attention away
from religion over the past decades because they assumed—wrongly
they now recognize—that religion was a waning social force. Since re-
ligion is here to stay, a permanent feature of the world stage, Geertz
maintains that we must revise some of our assumptions and set guid-
ing principles to direct us in its study. Chief among these principles
is that of proceeding from the “Native point of view.”^6 To do so, he
argues, “we need a combination of phenomenological analyses, that
enable us to connect with the human subjectivities at play, with what
believers really think and feel” (Geertz 2006 b, 6 ).^7 Each and every
chapter in this book does this, demonstrating time after time that it is
possible to connect with our hosts in their world. How do contribu-
tors do so? By adopting indigenous epistemological and ethical per-
spectives. By parting with some deeply ingrained academic habits of
thought to engage in radical embodied participation in a wide range
of social settings, in co-activity with their hosts. The outcome of this
approach is seen in the fine phenomenological descriptions of their
experiences of transformation in the field. In the end, we recognize
with Geertz ( 1971 , vi) that “an anthropologist’s work tends, no mat-
