The Consecration of Categories
Phillip Romine
Anthropology seems a discipline of paradox; it both defines and critiques social and cultural categories. “Irish,” “British,” “German,” “Unionist,” “Nationalist,” “religion,” “culture;” each category provides an insight into histories, shared experiences, and selective memories of groups of people. The vault of knowledge defining each category changes constantly, and despite our understanding of a category’s dynamic nature, we in Sociology and Anthropology continue to use categories as static tools for grasping concepts. Through my experiences and readings within Sociology/Anthropology, I have begun to reconcile the paradox of categories as both useful tools for and subjects of critical reflection.
When I first encountered the Sociology/Anthropology major, the interaction between two courses brought to the forefront core categories of experience. Torn between Religion and Sociology/Anthropology as major fields of study, I decided to enroll in Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at the same time as Classics and Moderns.
The Religion course shattered assumed realities. That the Christian Trinity was a human conception, and furthermore only one side in an epic debate during early Christianity, piqued my academic interest. Modern Americans also seemed to duplicate religion beyond the boundaries of church walls. Award shows, drugs, rock concerts, and sporting events served as additions to—even substitutes for—the religious experience. The choices made by people (e.g. to conceive of God in a triune way, as well as seek religious stimulation outside of conventional church worship) spoke less to an inheritance, and more to a dynamic process that characterizes cultural phenomena such as religion. Logic and ecstasy rounded out the “religious” categories discussed in the course, interwoven into what was termed the “religious experience.”
Initially compelling in the Intro to Cultural Anthropology course was the process of “making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.” I had affirmed that notion upon my return to the United States after an academic year in Germany. No longer were ideas such as “normal” or “common sense” universal truths, but cultural labels for sanctioned behavior. For example, my lack of experience eating “properly” with a knife and fork was regarded as abnormally ignorant behavior by my German host family. Not only did Anthropology provide me with the vocabulary to articulate my “foreign” experience; I was introduced to a corpus of theories and methodologies that could make sense of past and future experiences. In relation to my Religion course, Intro made me realize that cultural forces largely shaped the decision to discuss, for example, topics in “classic” or “modern” terms.
I also came to realize that the Religion course, with its emphasis on human decisions and experiences that shape cultural action, was in reality another Anthropology course. One of the texts used for the course was entitled Death and Life: An American Theology. The author laid out his argument of how American culture views “death” as the full negation of “life,” whereas the Christian perspective situates, even glorifies, death as a vital part of life. While certainly a “religious” perspective, the text nevertheless used cultural symbols, rituals, and systems of meaning to deconstruct Americans’ conception of death as diametrically opposed to the Christian perspective.
Sophomore year in the major consisted exclusively of theory. Anthropological Theory in the Fall and Sociological Theory in the Spring left little room for creative interpretations of the theories encountered. Nevertheless, my interest in things religious drew me to extend Weber’s notion of Protestant duty to Evangelical political fervor for an assignment. The presentation was the first in which my personal religious history became the subject of critical analysis.
Alongside others, the theories of Edward Said and Bernard Cohn formed the foundation of my anthropological pursuits. Both questioned the basic categories used to define (and often dominate) “foreign” groups. In his groundbreaking work Orientalism, Said identifies the “othering” of the “East” on the part of the “West” as an arbitrary yet necessary process:
…locales, regions, geographical sectors such as ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ are man-made. Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other. (5)
Said’s theory roots itself in colonial history and thereby incorporates Cohn’s critique of what he terms Anthropologyland:
The anthropologist posits a place where the natives are authentic, untouched and aboriginal, and strives to deny the central historical fact that the people he or she studies are constituted in the historically significant colonial situation, affirming instead that they are somehow out of time and history. (19)
Theirs is a reaction to what I term positivist anthropology, an endeavor that uses field work to fill gaps “in our existing ethnographic knowledge of Anthropologyland” (21). Under such circumstances, anthropology becomes a tool of domination and self-affirmation. At the heart of their arguments, Said and Cohn question the purpose and authenticity of ethnographically derived categories. Rather than shed light on cultural practices or dynamics of those studied, anthropology historically has revealed more about the ethnographer’s own cultural backgrounds.
One must also recognize that categories of identity must be considered in terms of what they are not, as was the case for Said’s descriptions of “Westerners” defining themselves in direct opposition to “Easterners.” Place and race are therefore powerful, though arbitrary, categories (i.e. comments such as: “They live on the other side of the world” and “He is as black as the night, and I cannot even tan” are expressions of distance, and therefore difference, from the other). In the case of black studies, for example, the process of defining blackness requires an investigation of how those labeled “black” identify themselves as well as how “non-blacks” define both themselves and “blacks” based on stereotypes, discriminatory practices, shared experiences, and selective histories. The social consequences of “blackness” in early nineteenth century America differ from the consequences of today, but certain elements themselves have changed little over those two hundred years.
Junior year saw the dawn of my methodological endeavors into Sociology and Anthropology. My project in the Social Science Research Methods course focused on religious engagement among categories of Christians. While the inclination—that evangelical Protestants (in comparison to mainline Protestants and Catholics) would most closely associate religiosity with organized religious involvement—proved mostly true, I could not help but question my categories. In order to quantify my results, I had to define which Protestant denominations qualified as evangelical or mainline. The survey asked for students’ denomination, and not whether they would classify themselves as either mainline or evangelical. My delineation was based almost solely on my own experience with denominations that I considered evangelical. Fortunately, one of the studies used in the literature review supported my categorizations. But the question remained: who gets to define who is “mainline” or “evangelical?” Even though my definition proved useful to my research, did my categorizations accurately represent the members of each denomination? As arbitrary as they might be, nevertheless they proved extremely important to the quantification of my data, an instance of simultaneous representation and misrepresentation that I visited again during my senior year.
Interim was spent shadowing a pastor in rural Germany. Rather than sit and write out field notes, I kept the same long hours the pastor kept. Methodologically my choice sought not representation, but rather participation. The more contact with the pastor, the better my understanding of the pastor’s milieu. I wrote fewer and fewer field notes as the pastor’s days lengthened beyond 10 and 12 hours of preparation, meetings, classes, visits, errands, baptisms, funerals, and church services. Another hindrance to note-taking was the strange feeling I had that I should be fitting my observations into some larger theoretical framework, a category, something unequivocally “German.” Without professors (besides my advisor via email) or theoretical commentaries on “Germanness” to consult, I felt lost and unable to contextualize my observations.
At first, I had no problem identifying the major categories of meaning in Northern Ireland. “Protestant” and “Catholic” were easy enough to understand. Upon further study, “British” and “Irish” became categories that did not always match flawlessly with their respective religious categories. “Unionism” and “Nationalism” added further nuance to an increasingly complex web of perspectives. Rather than spend extensive time pouring over theoretical frameworks pertaining to Northern Ireland, our program director put us in conversation with people from most every perspective, engaged in most every issue facing the devolved country. Confronting the varieties and dimensions of discrimination and categorization embedded in Northern Ireland’s history made finding any one solution to the “problem” impossible. The conclusion of the program forced me to reflect on the ways methodology not only puts theory to practice, but also creates tangible solutions by establishing empathetic relationships in the communities where they are implemented. While history largely sides with the “Irish” as the victims of British aggression, who is “Irish” and who belongs in Northern Ireland are no longer congruous. Unionists in largely Nationalist communities suffer discrimination alongside their Nationalist neighbors in Unionist communities.
Senior year has been a synthesis of my groundwork in theory and the implementation of methodology at home and abroad. At the outset of my Independent Study, I sought to frame my experience in Germany in terms of the pastor’s social role in the community. To ground my investigation, I was given theoretical readings on the category of religion. E. Valentine Daniel’s article “The Arrogation of Being” was a moment of deep reflection on the categorization of “fundamental” aspects of cultural experience, in this case religion. Rather than a cultural universal, religion is, for Daniel, the Christian expression of mood, mind, and moment. Furthermore, meaning is necessary for “Western” religious experience. Even what constitutes “Western” defined itself in terms of a Saidian relationship. The power of the religious category was expressed by both Talal Asad and Clifford Geertz in terms of its creative and ordering impulses. Asad’s “secular” evolved out of the “religious,” and Geertz’s system of symbols the endow meaning on the chaotic and the mundane of life. The unifying theme of the readings lies in their emphasis on the impact religion—a debated category to be sure—has had on the construction of meaning.
The most vibrant and meaningful moments in the major have involved some form of human interaction. Discussing religion readings with Professor Williamson, listening to the pastor speak about his own social context, and debating issues of marginalization with politicians in Northern Ireland have a staying power exponentially greater than much of the theory I learned at the beginning of my course of study. Dialogue brings the process of Anthropology into the tangible, external world, a fitting methodology considering the discipline’s study of humans and their worlds. Participant-learning is equally as pedagogically rewarding as participant-observation. Revisiting the theoretical past (the more interior realm of Sociology and Anthropology) has, however, put in perspective the methodology of the last year and a half. As a tool for reflection, theory binds personal experience to larger schemas of experience. Theory generalizes methodology. In terms of categories, their arbitrary yet meaningful nature can be concretely described in theory, but only fully understood by carrying out methodology through experience.
Bibliography
Asad, Talal. Formulations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford;
Stanford University Press, 2003.
Cohn, Bernard S. An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays. New Delhi;
Oxford University Press, 1987.
Daniel, E. V. “The Arrogation of Being by the Blind-Spot of Religion,” in InternationalStudies in Human Rights. 2002, Vol. 68, pages 31-54. The Hague; Martinus Nijhoff, 1999.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York; Basic Books, 1973.
McGill, Arthur C. Death and Life: An American Theology. Eds. Charles A. Wilson and
Per M. Anderson. Philadelphia; Fortress Press, 1987.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York; Random House, 1979.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Stephen
Kalberg. Chicago; Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001.
