Expériences des mondes spirituels et savoirs en Birmanie : la place de l’ethnographe
Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière
Moussons September 23, 2019 DOI: 10.4000/moussons.2876 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Practitioners of spirit possession and esoteric Buddhism in Burma |
| Keywords | Burma Knowledge Experience Ethnography Spiritual intermediation Esoteric buddhism |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key findings | Ethnographic knowledge about spiritual experiences can only be constructed by analyzing the interactions between the observer and the observed, as the observer is inevitably caught in the situation. |
Abstract
Transposing a field of practices into a constituted knowledge is highly problematic for the ethnographer observing practices founded on the experience of the spiritual world. How can a so-called spiritual experience be observed? How can it be transformed into an ethnographical knowledge? Drawing on two contrasted cases issued from my fieldwork in Burma, spirit possession and esoteric Buddhism, I will try to show that, in any case, the observer finds himself caught in the observed situation (see Jeanne Favret-Saada on this subject) and that in order to construct knowledge about these experiences, it is necessary to analyse the interactions between the ethnographer and the ethnographees.