Zuni and the American Imagination - Book Review

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2003 by James V. Spickard

Why should sociologists of religion care about these matters? Because, whether we like it or not, our own studies are as wrapped in our own parochial concerns as were Stevenson's, Cushing's, and Culin's. It is easy -- and a bit cheap -- to point out how American it is to treat religions in terms of markets, thus imagining our own world the measure of the universe as firmly as the l9th century evolutionists imagined themselves to be the pinnacle of social development. It is a bit harder -- but no less accurate -- for others of us to recognize how our "science" is shaped by our own commitment to equality, as we call for giving those we study equal voice to our own. Mea culpa.

Is there any way out of this dilemma? Can we get past our own imaginings to a real encounter with the Others that we study? McFeely does not ask this question, much less answer it She seems to think that only 19th century ethnographers failed to escape their own unacknowledged prejudices. Too bad.