Methodological difficulties attendant to ethnographic fieldwork—such as gaining access, maintaining fieldwork relations, objectivity,
and fieldwork stresses—are intensified for researchers working with “absolutist” religious group, groups that hold an exclusivist
or totalistic definition of truth. Based on my fieldwork in a conservative South Korean evangelical community, I explore in
this article two central and related methodological dilemmas pertaining to studying absolutist religious groups: identity
negotiation and emotional management during fieldwork. Writing from my complex location as a feminist and a cultural/religious
insider/outsider in relation to the South Korean evangelical community, I explore in particular the challenges posed by identity/role
management in the field and its emotional dimensions, including the issue of the researcher’s power and vulnerability, the
quandary of “conformity,” and the emotional costs of self-repression arising from the researcher’s fundamental value conflicts
with the group. I conclude with a reflection on the implications of these experiences for ethnographic methodology, most centrally,
how we manage our emotional responses in the field, including “inappropriate” ones, and how we can relate them to the research
process.
Keywords Ethnographic methodology - Absolutist religious groups - Identity negotiation - Emotional management - South Korean evangelical community