On moving across: translocative religion and the interpreter's position

Abstract

Scholars in many fields have considered the position of the interpreter, and religious studies scholars have addressed some of the relevant issues. However, none of the available accounts is fully satisfying because they either fail to locate the interpreter or imagine the interpreter's position as fixed. In this article I draw on my experience of doing fieldwork with transnational migrants as I try to move toward a more textured account of where we stand when we do our work. I explore the ambiguities of that position and suggest that scholars, like transnational migrants, are constantly moving across. Scholars continually move back and forth between inside and outside, fact and value, evidence and narrative, the living and the dead, here and there, us and them.

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