O Flaherty

One such scholar who offers an interpretation of this method is Wendy Doniger - O’Flaherty. O’Flaherty, in detailing her account of the hunter and the sage, advocates for religious studies scholars to be more sympathetic to the beliefs and experiences of the adherent within the specific phenomenon. That is to say, she holds that we as scholar should try to the best of our ability to put ourselves in the participants ‘shoes’, “but to remain, at the same time, inside [our] own head.” The stance that O’Flaherty is arguing from enables scholars to retrieve valuable data of the participants in study about their belief structure and experiences, while simultaneously allowing us to sympathetically share the participants disposition towards the specific …show more content…
P. Pratap Kumar argued that our conceptual understanding of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ will always be up for debate, and should not concern nor prevent scholars from undertaking a specific study. Scholars in studying these phenomena are just as insightful and contribute just as actively to the field as the new-age practitioners themselves. And with new-age phenomena being intertwined with participants who stray from identification, we cannot fairly call them ‘insiders’, nor call ourselves as scholars ‘outsiders’. Being said, Kumar regards all religious and spiritual systems in a similar manner to J. Z. Smith, in that they are academic constructs which are defined by the specific parameters of a scholar’s study. What’s most useful about the position Kumar assumes is that since religious and spiritual concepts are fabricated, it is a scholar’s general authority to not only study these phenomena, but to also affirm from which parameters they are actively studying within. This entails that we could then research modern religious and spiritual practice not only as modern ‘social phenomena’, but also in a broader sense, ultimately using them as “conceptual tools for our scholarly comparative …show more content…
This analysis has also presented a variation to the method that is currently offered within our Western paradigm, which emphasizes a focus on one’s phenomelogical experience, and achieves accurate data through the use of participant observation with a sympathetic disposition. Even further, it demonstrates how religious and spiritual concepts are academically fabricated, and therefore the scholar’s ultimate prerogative to study and interpret as objectively as