Ethnographic Best Practices

Eric Hoenes del Pinal is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Trained as a cultural and linguistic anthropologist, his approach to the study of religion is strongly ethnographic, with an emphasis on the role of language and non-verbal forms of communication in shaping human interaction. His research interests include the study of global Christianity, the politics of language and culture, and the ethnography of Latin America with special emphasis on indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. In Guarded by Two Jaguars: A Catholic Parish Divided by Language and Faith he examines the roles of language and non-verbal forms of communication in creating congregational differences between Q’eqchi’-Maya Mainstream and Charismatic Catholics. Guarded by Two Jaguars received an Honorable Mention for the Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion in 2023. He is also the co-editor of Mediating Catholicism: Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries, which examines processes of Catholics’ practices of mediatization in the contemporary world.  Dr. Hoenes del Pinal’s current research project examines the intersection of Catholic and indigenous understandings of human-nature relations in the face of climate change.

Brendan Jamal Thornton is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  He is a cultural anthropologist and specialist on religion and culture in the Caribbean. His research and scholarship are interdisciplinary in scope and have been published in what are generally considered to be the top journals in the fields of anthropology, religious studies, and Latin American studies, including, Anthropological Quarterly, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Latin American Research Review. His first book, Negotiating Respect: Pentecostalism, Masculinity, and the Politics of Spiritual Authority in the Dominican Republic (University Press of Florida 2016) was awarded the 2017 Barbara T. Christian Literary Award for the best book in the humanities by the international Caribbean Studies Association.

Kristy Nabhan-Warren is Professor and V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair in Catholic Studies at the University of Iowa. Kristy is passionate about teaching and research and finds both vocations to be mutually informing and inspiring. In both the classroom and in her scholarly work, she focuses on the lived, daily experiences of American Christians and their communities. Kristy’s newest book is Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (UNC (Press, September 2021). Based on seven years of fieldwork in rural Iowa, Meatpacking America is a finely grained ethnography as well as historically situated study of lived religion in the hog and corn producing state of Iowa. Kristy makes the argument that if we want to understand the intersectionalities of migration, work, and religion in the United States today, then we must focus on states like Iowa and the broader midwestern Cornbelt. She makes a case for studying small towns and rural places, as scholars have long privileged urban locales. Moreover, if we want to truly understand the complex dynamics of religion, scholars must explore places long overlooked as religious sites, like slaughterhouses and farm fields.

Lauren Leve is Associate Professor in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Her scholarly interests lie at the intersection of religion, culture and changing forms of life in contemporary Nepal and South Asia. Trained as anthropologist, she studies the ways that religious practices and subjectivities are bound up in, mediate, and in turn, are mediated by broader political, economic and social trends—particularly those associated with neoliberal globalization. She is also concerned with the ways that human agents use religion to reflect on the world as they know it, and as they wish it to be. Her first book, The Buddhist Art of Living in Nepal: Ethical Practice and Religious Reform, explores the twentieth century revival of Theravada Buddhism in Nepal. By situating the “Theravada turn” in recent historical developments—battles over the Hindu state, economic liberalization, and democratic political reforms—she shows how these changes call forth new forms of personhood and ethical self-cultivation that modernist Buddhist practices embody and extend.