Participant observation

The data gathered from interviews were supplemented with participant observation.

Participant observation can “provide unreplicable insight into the processes and meanings that sustain and motivate social groups” (Herbert, 2000: 550). Through participation and observation, detailed and deeply embedded experiences and meanings will be easily enacted. By examining and contrasting what people say and what people do (the relationship between discourse and practice), participant observation allows for observation of both discourse and practice and could double-check the second-hand data. Another advantage of participant observation is that it is neither overly indulgent in, nor excessively detached from the research field (Van Maanen, 1988).

In order to explore the nature of religious change in detail, this research adopted ethnographic techniques to interrogate everyday life, religious practices, and the elusive nature of religion of particular social groups with richness and complexity. To minimise some of potential criticisms that can be made of research that relies on participant observation alone, different data sources including interviews and documentary sources (discussed in more detail below) were used to allow for a form of triangulation (Flick, 2004). During the process of data collection and emergent analysis, I frequently communicated my ideas and discoveries with participants, my peers and supervisors to enhance reflexivity about my observation and representation.

In comparison to interviewing or documentary analysing, participant observation provides a different way of interpreting and presenting data which can in some ways be more grounded, concrete and intensive (Watson and Till, 2010). It allows the researcher to observe and capture non-verbal behaviours and practices which are not accountable and

articulable from words or texts. Through observation, people’s daily routines, behaviours, actions, conversations and interactions can be examined in greater detail than possible with simply oral accounts gathered from interviews. Additionally, because the research in some ways gets to experience some of the same events and share feelings, participant observation can provide multiple viewpoints and provide deeper insights into people’s retrospective accounts which may be partial, incomplete or misleading.

The term participant observation can obscure the varying balances between ‘participation’ and ‘observation’ that can occur in different research projects, or at different times during the same research project (DeWalt and DeWalt, 2011: 19-40). More active forms of participation were mainly used to understand everyday lives, patterns and meanings of religious practices of laypeople in the fieldsites. As I stated earlier, I lived in a local people’s home and attended their family activities, such as doing household chores, helping with tourism businesses and participating in their religious practices. I became acquainted with more people when I was introduced into their social networks attending more ceremonies and gatherings, such as weddings, funerals, religious rituals, dinners, Karaoke parties. Generally, young people were comparatively easier to approach. This is probably because I was of a similar age as my young participants, which meant that we had certain common memories, interests and attitudes to share. Specifically in my fieldwork, I participated in the Bon laypersons’ everyday lives through attending activities of men and women of different generations and attending their religious practices (pilgrimages, rituals, rites, ceremonies and daily religious behaviours such as praying, chanting).

Non-participant observation was used to study religious and non-religious activities of Bon monks of the two monasteries (Zharu and Gami). Monks normally live in isolated monasteries. It was impracticable for me as a woman to live in the monastery. Therefore, I lived in the villages and visited monasteries every day from dawn until dark. Jiuzhaigou monks live at home, but not at the monastery (see Chapter 7 for the explanation and discussion), so I had more chances to meet them through various public and private events. Monks from Gami Monastery often came to Jiuzhaigou to conduct religious services. I got to know some Gami monks on these occasions. We chatted about various things, such as the origin of Bon, the history of Tibetans, the relationships between Bon and my Buddhist sect, Nyingmapa, and the religious relationships between Jiuzhaigou and Songpan, and many other issues related to religion.

In addition, I used observation to record the religious settings of various religious practices. These included physical settings such as monastery and home, as well as religious events such as home prayer and the village rite (these kinds of public religious

ceremonies carried out are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5). Table 4.2 below provides a summary of the observational research I conducted during fieldwork.

During observation, both shorter and longer field notes were written to assist my constant reflections about research process and my role and position as a researcher and friend.

Although participant observation has many advantages, one does not straightforwardly move from being an outsider to an insider. The process of employing participant observation involves negotiating complex identities and relationships between the researcher and the researched (Dawson, 2010). In carrying out participant observation, I inevitably encountered some difficulties.

Table 4.2 What I observed

The

observed Detailed information

Religious practices

Different religious events (e.g. public and private rituals, religious ceremonies, pilgrimage); embodied religious practices

Time; location; people and their appearance; organization; procedure; interactions; social relations; behaviour; environment

Religious spaces

Temple, monastery, home, shrine, sacred mountain etc.

Location; Layout; shape; style; space users; ways of using space

Everyday life Religious and non-religious daily routines of each family members (grandparents; parents; children); their engagement in tourism

First and foremost, gaining trust in a relatively sensitive place was not easy at the beginning. Suspicion was often apparent during my first contacts with local people. Previously I mentioned that the pressurised religious and political atmosphere increased the difficulties of gaining trust and discussing religious issues. People often felt cautious around me at the beginning. I was even asked “are you sent by the JAB?” Jiuzhaigou people did not have a good relationship with the JAB because of many conflicting opinions on Jiuzhaigou management. When they heard I was conducting research, they thought I was a spy from JAB to collecting their complaints. To ease their suspicions, I showed them my student ID and my information sheet. My friends in Jiuzhaigou also helped to explain my role and fieldwork to local people. My name was quickly spread

among many villagers. As time went by, they gradually trusted me as a researcher. Local people were also cautious in talking about religious issues. In order to decrease their suspicion, I normally directly showed my information sheet and stated that my purpose was to investigate everyday life and local culture (rather than Tibetan politics). This to a great extent alleviated their doubts. My identity as an Aba resident and a Tibetan also helped considerably in gaining their trust. My hometown is Maerkang County, which is near Jiuzhaigou, and hence we shared a place attachment to Aba Prefecture. Most of them had known and been to my hometown. My Tibetan identity further let them treat me as an insider, which encouraged them to share Tibetan things (religion, culture, history) with me and created common ground. My actual knowledge on Tibetan culture and religion, my Sichuan dialect and my life experience in Aba helped me to start conversations and to find topics fluently. Therefore, talking about religious issues was like sharing similar feelings with someone who understands. For example, I compared the substantial number of religious buildings in Jiuzhaigou to to the situation in my hometown (which has far fewer religious buildings), and asked them to express their views and feelings on the contrast and change.

Another technique I used to reduce the sensitivity in my interviews and chats with local people was to use the term “xinyang” (belief) to replace “zongjiao” (religion). In Tibetan, there is no direct equivalent to the concept of religion (or zongjiao), superstition (mixin) and nationality (minzu). The Tibetan language even contained no word for Buddhism. Tibetans, traditionally, did not think of themselves as Buddhists (Stein, 1972: 192; Kvaerne, 1972: 22; Bishop, 1993: 17). In Chinese, “zongjiao” and “xinyang” to some extent are interchangeable. When I spoke about “xinyang”, they could understand it refers to their Bon religion. Most of the time “zongjiao” appears in political discourses and government documents other than daily discourses, so speaking about “zongjiao” has more formal and political implications. If I wanted to say “zongjiao”, I normally used “zongjiao wenhua” (religious culture). When religion is connected with culture, the political connotations of “zongjiao” are greatly decreased.

Secondly, participant observation involved issues of power relations between the researchers and the participants (Valentine, 1997). The researcher has ‘analytical power’ which allows her to determine the direction of fieldwork, what to ask, what to present and how to interpret data (Rose, 1997: 311). In my fieldwork, power was present in relationships between me and participants. My identity as a PhD student created some obstruction for my communication with local people in the first place. I was regarded by the local people as a knowledgeable person who has a certain kind of authority. Sometimes I encountered remarks such as, “You are a PhD. You must know much more

assumed that I would have complete knowledge of Tibetan religion and culture. The researcher-researched relationship could influence the ways in which data are produced or presented. To lessen the differences, I stressed their local knowledge which I do not have. In my self-introductions, I always stated this as well as my wish to learn about local religion and culture.