There's actually nothing methodologically wrong or unethical with inadvertently changing some aspect of the community or its attitudes. When any new person with a foreign perspective enters another culture, there will be an impact, and ethnogrpahers are no different. In fact, some anthropologists would say that not initiating change within the community (in a beneficial and collaborative manner) is itself unethical, as it returns nothing to the people studied.
On TL - I'm still not convinced that she actually did anything improper. It's clear that people are upset, but I'm not sure that wasn't the result of the fieldwork process itself, which can often lead to misunderstandings and problems with the process by which lived experience is transformed into ethnography. She does briefly mention scholars who have taken the stance that magic is real, but I can understand not dwelling on it. "Magic is practiced because it works" seems to be a theoretically unsatisfying argument and is likely to leave a large portion of the audience unpersuaded. (If someone wants to pull that last statement apart, please do.)
Dan Harms
Coordinator of Instruction Librarian
State University of New York - Cortland
Memorial Library B-110
(607) - 753-4042
________________________________
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic on behalf of Caduceus Books
Sent: Tue 2/14/2006 6:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Persuasions of the Witch's Craft
Greetings!
>>>i think it was Joanne Pearson, a religious studies scholar who workedin the same geographical area later on after TL, who had immense troubles
>>>getting confidence from contacts, many of them asking 'you're not going to do a Tanya on us, are you?'............. so 'doing a Tanya' can cause
>>>ripples far beyond just producing a book that some academics don't like
If Tanya Luhrmans work has affected the pagan scene, making its members
behave in a different manner to how they would have done otherwise, I
would have thought there are ethical considerations. I am sure
anthropologists will have given such issues a great deal of thought.
My best wishes
Ben
--
Ben Fernee
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