Title: Could this be Political Anthropology? Reflections on Studying Conservative Evangelical Subcultures
Abstract: For the last three decades (and in fact, the length of U.S. history), faith-based social and political movements – right, left, and center – have been sculpting the American political landscape. Yet the vast majority of our discipline’s coverage of religion and politics (at least in the U.S.) has, until recently, depended on quantitative analysis, usually using large-scale survey and opinion polling on attitudes, practices, and beliefs. If political scientists hope to understand religious politics and faith-based social change efforts in more than superficial, stereotyping ways, we must be willing to explore religious subcultures up close. That involves developing a set of ethnographic research skills that may be less familiar (or comfortable) for political scientists than for sociologists and anthropologists. To some extent, it means carrying out creative observational and interactive research at the fuzzy (and undertheorized) boundary between the realms of “culture” and “politics”.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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