I'm currently a PhD student in a very good religious studies department. Very generally, I do work in contemporary N. America/Europe, working with theorists who focus their attention on social and subjective plasticity, and performance theorists that focus on the body as it regards eroticism and subjective violence. While my theoretical interests are longstanding, I'm still working to situate them comfortably within a subfield, a professional identity. (And I'm still early in my program, so I've got time.) I've been thinking about beginning to focus more on ethnography/anthropology for reasons both personal and professional.
How do ethnographers/anthropologists think about their relation to theory? (By theory, I mean something like various manifestations and transformations of the continental tradition.) Is anthropology/ethnography a relatively comfortable place from which to do serious theoretical work? (For example, Lit. departments seem to be a fairly natural fit for those types of interests.) What are the intellectual and pragmatic challenges/benefits of having a strong interest in both theory and ethnography?
Thanks for listening.