Reflexivity, Ethics and the Teaching of the Sociology of Religion

Abstract

This essay reflects on the ethical and reflexive considerations surrounding the use of student fieldwork reports on a course on the sociology of religion. Using reflexivity as a teaching strategy coincides with changes in sociological approaches to religion where experiential and substantive issues are stressed in its study. Reflexive and ethical issues that emerge on courses on sexuality and gender politics are compared to those which seem peculiar to the teaching of religion from a sociological perspective. Study of these fieldwork reports disclosed the way students faced their own ethical worries in a task generated to enhance their own reflexivity but also an understanding of religiosity.

Getting off on sex research: A methodological commentary on the sexual desires of sex researchers

“…Corresponding to this, a range of disciplines have increasingly emphasized the importance of standpoint (e.g., Harding, 2004; Hartsock, 1998), positionality (e.g., Merriam et al., 2001; Rose, 1997), and reflexivity (e.g., Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Finlay, 2002), and in turn, have called attention to the intrinsically blurry boundaries between researchers’ personal and professional selves (Bochner, 1997; Ellis and Berger, 2003). Along these lines, identities such as a researcher’s race (e.g., Rhodes, 1994), class (e.g., Reay, 1996), gender (e.g., Williams and Heikes, 1993), sexual orientation (e.g., Perry et al., 2004), and religion (e.g., Flanagan, 2001) have increasingly been acknowledged as pertinent to the research process. Additionally, it has become more or less standard practice for researchers to disclose information about their funding sources and other potential conflicts of interest (Schwartz et al., 2008; Fontanarosa et al., 2005).…”

Monastic martyrs of compassion: murdered Trappist monks in Algeria and the different meanings of martyrdom

“…Stability opens an arena for compassion, and that is clearly a virtue. The rediscovery of virtue ethics in many realms of social and religious life during the last decades (Flanagan & Jupp, 2001) forms the horizon of this powerful attitude of the monks realised in their stability as part of their character. Macintyre summarises the urge of an attitudinal ethics evoked by concrete practices and experiences recently in the following question (Macintyre, 2011, p. 11): 'What is the relationship between character formation, being able to learn from experience, and being open to political and moral argument?'…”