enjoying a marvellous workshop today at Oxford co-hosted by Morgan Clarke and Ali-Reza Bhojani exploring Ethnographic theology in Islam. We’re exploring the challenges of defining the meaning of “theology” and ethnographic practice for this kind of interdisciplinary methodology, and also the ways that each challenges the practices of the other in helpful ways.

Big questions around the ways we define positionality of the researcher (how much should one disclose? why are some religious agents expected to do more disclosure than their secular counterparts – and vice versa?). Highlighting the problems of activist / researcher binaries, and exploring the presence of messy forms of religion in hybrid formulations, secular theologies (of capitalism, liberalism…).

I’ve also had the terrific collection of essays in Parralax by @mhbastian and friends on “Field Philosophy and Other Experiments” in mind as specialists in Anthropology of Islam, legal scholars, and moral philosophers raise questions around disciplinary boundaries and the negotiation of personal and collaborative values and ethics.