Although the importance of the researcher's embodiment has been noted in health and social sciences research, in many instances, more attention has been paid to the embodiment of the researched. Thus, more in-depth analysis of the embodied researcher can illuminate qualitative inquiry. The influence of the embodied researcher became visible in a recent critical ethnographic study examining the negotiation of religious, spiritual, and cultural plurality in health care. In this article, we do not present research findings per se, but rather methodological reflections. As researchers, we highlight emotional and bodily ways of knowing and experiences of difference such as culture, race, and religion as embodied and a part of researcher-participant encounters. We aim to elucidate the awareness of being embodied researchers, and with this elucidation, we consider implications for knowledge generation for health and social sciences.

Several intriguing developments mark the role and expression of religion and spirituality in society in recent years. In what were deemed secular societies, flows of increased sacralization (variously referred to as 'new', 'alternative', 'emergent' and 'progressive' spiritualities) and resurgent globalizing religions (sometimes with fundamentalist expressions) are resulting in unprecedented plurality. These shifts are occurring in conjunction with increasing ethnic diversity associated with global migration, as well as other axes of difference within contemporary society. Democratic secular nations such as Canada are challenged to achieve social cohesion in the face of growing religious, spiritual and ethnic diversity. These challenges are evident in the high-paced, demanding arena of Health care. Here, religious and spiritual plurality enter in, sometimes resulting in conflict between medical services and patients' beliefs, other times provoking uncertainties on the part of healthcare professionals about what to do with their own religiously or spiritually grounded values and beliefs. In this paper, we present selected findings from a 3-year study that examined the negotiation of religious and spiritual pluralism in Health care. Our focus is on the themes of 'sacred' and 'place', exploring how the sacred - that which is attributed as special and set apart as it pertains to the divine, transcendence, God or higher power - takes form in social and material spaces in hospitals.

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Healthcare services are increasingly being provided in the home. At the same time, these home contexts are changing as global migration has brought unprecedented diversity both in the recipients of care, and home health workers. In this paper, we present findings of a Canadian study that examined the negotiation of religious and ethnic plurality in home health. Qualitative analysis of the data from interviews and observations with participants-clients, administrators, home healthcare workers-revealed how religion is expressed and 'managed' in home health services

This paper considers the interrelationship between family and church, their practices and spaces. Three areas that emerged from qualitative interviews with women who were current and former churchgoers are addressed. First, women described their ‘church as family’ because of personal histories of attending with family and family-like relationships. Second, the resonance between family and church practices and spaces mapped onto other geographies such as gender. Third, experiences of belonging were narrated through the trope ‘church as family’, yet disrupted by racial and classed encounters. The women's experiences demonstrate that intimate practices and spaces of family are permeable and not necessarily bound to conventional formations or sites. They can stretch beyond the household into other spaces, such as church, whereby congregational members are part of kin networks or become ‘chosen families' or a ‘personal community’ that is familial. By looking at this interrelationship, the ways in which people ‘do family’ may offer insights into how and why people may ‘do church’.