The Many Faces of a Himalayan Goddess: Haḍimbā, Her Devotees, and Religion in Rapid Change, by Ehud Halperin

Not so very long ago, ethnographic writing sought to convey an air of scientific objectivity by means of a number of rhetorical devices that served to distance the ethnographer from those about whom s/he wrote. This was counterproductive on many levels, not least because the ethnographer’s own embodied experiences, feelings and intuitions play a very important role in what s/he writes about ‘the natives’. These days, expectations are quite different: the ethnographer is expected to include hi...