Thesis: customs are carried on insofar as they serve as texts for

territory building. A material theory of knowledge and action,

applied to the custom of Sabbatarianism.

Michael Kelly November 2010

There is evidence that human beings instinctively intuit how the world works in a
“magical” way (Subbotsky 1994). That is to say they ascribe causes to effects on
the basis of barely repeated correlations between phenomena. It is by these
means that we pre-theoretically posit the content of other people’s minds, and
tend to mis-ascribe intentions to things that don’t have minds. The upshot of this
is that we have a tendency to err toward thinking about the world per se as if it
was an intentional agent to be influenced (Schweder et al 1977).
There is also evidence that we instinctively interpret new information from
the world in light of information already encoded in memory. Through a process
psychologists call “confirmation bias”, this amounts to a set of motivations erring
toward conserving the beliefs we already hold, as opposed to challenging them.
We do this in order to retain a unified point of view on reality (Nickerson 1998).

It is my thesis that these motivations play a part in territorial behaviour. We

create environments that maximise the salience of retained information by
reproducing our own constructions of it, to the exclusion or at least minimising of
alternative constructions.
This is achieved through the creation and use of texts that select and
communicate information, forming and transmitting our constructions to others
and competing with their own. One’s territory is stabilised or expanded when our
text triggers a set of associations that trigger another’s appropriate behaviour
(Simon 1990), in this case in a way that confirms the beliefs we already hold.

A custom that is carried on, under this analysis, is a text that maintains a stable
territory in this way. It “magically” succeeds in maintaining the world in the way its
people have previously constructed it, maintaining a satisfyingly unified and
stable sense of reality.

It follows that if a people are isolated from the texts of others - through
geographical isolation, economic independence, and/or the text becoming a
written record and part of an authoritative canon, a custom resists change and is
able to continue for a long time.
Conversely, it undergoes change when its people are introduced to
competing texts, through, for instance, incoming settlers from a neighbouring
symbolically dominant culture, the opening up of trade routes, and the
democratisation of communication.

Circumstantial support for this analysis is given by Margaret Bennett in her “One
& Two Percent” essay (Bennett 1996). She observes that Scottish customs
tended to be preserved with greater fidelity within Scottish-Canadian emigrant
communities as opposed to those who stayed in Scotland. She suggests that this
was because their practice of Scottish custom was not only a means of
maintaining community cohesion in a challenging alien land, but also because it
escaped the re-interpretive process of Anglicisation.

An example of a custom that has survived into the modern age is the custom of
Sabbatarianism. A very varied custom across the world, a specific variant within
the context of the Western Isles, one that provokes discussion in residents and
visitors alike, is that of taking washing off the line and bringing it inside before
Sunday. While inhabitants report that this custom currently appears to be all but
died out in places such as Skye, it reportedly remains prevalent in Raasay and in
parts of the Uists (anecdotal). The practice appears to be more prevalent within
the older generation, and is particularly associated with the requirements of the
Free Church of Scotland, whose congregation are said to make their disapproval
known should the practice be contravened (anecdotal).

Seen as an observance of the fifth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day

and keep it holy” - revealed, it is believed, by the god Yaweh to Moses on Mount
Sinai, it is associated with other Sabbatarian customs such as locking up
childrens’ toyboxes and play areas, and not driving a car. It is part of a wider
fundamentalist tradition in the Free Church that seeks to re-access Bible lead
orthodoxy in all aspects of worship (anecdotal).

Under the above analysis, although admittedly controversial for some, the belief
in a god can at least be partly understood as an aspect of the human tendency
toward “magical thinking” (Boyer, 2003). It could be said that the will to influence
some unseen intentional being is evidenced by practices such as regular prayer,
orthodoxy, and worship. Observance of the Sabbath could be seen as such an
effort of influence.

Christianity is an evangelical religion, taken chiefly from Christ’s parting

commandment to spread the word as given in the gospels. This was not only to
be through spoken and written testimony but through example. It seems
reasonable to cite this as an example of human territory building par excellence.
On this analysis, then, visibly removing washing from the line before Sunday
becomes a symbolic act of evangelism, a way of bringing to recall the practices,
traditions, and so associated emotional experiences of religious authority;
triggering a set of associations and contingent behaviours.

Under this analysis, however, the use of public disapproval when the custom is
contravened would suggest that this practice is no longer self maintaining, and is
therefore testament to it dying out as a custom and becoming instead part of a
system of etiquette. That is to say, the associations made in response to the
symbolic act are now different, the result being that it no longer automatically
engenders behaviour that is salient or widespread enough for maintaining a
unified sense of reality.
There are competing texts, since the Enlightenment and the consequent
growth of scientific interpretations of the world, incomers from the south carrying
different yet, if not contrary, similarly rooted customs with them, and the growth of
the internet. There are too many competing texts, allied with equal or greater
authorities, for this custom to be self maintaining; its statements tend to ring as
subjective as opposed to objective.

My thesis was that customs are carried on insofar as they serve as texts for
territory building - toward the minimising of cognitive dissonance by means of the
triggering of behaviour modifying associations in other people’s minds.

A custom tends to be repeatedly practiced when it is “magically” instrumental in

maintaining the world in the way people have previously constructed it; when
other people tend to respond according to how its supporting, transcendent
authority constructs the world. People behave in response to the associations
they make to certain symbolic acts inherent in the custom’s performance. The
visible practice of the custom feeds back on the apparent objectivity of how that
authority seeks to describe reality. These descriptions typically involve written
texts. Repetition of this practice is a self feeding process as long as behaviour
guiding sets of associations are present in the minds of its people. Conversely, it
undergoes change when its people are introduced to competing texts with
alternative constructions that equally or better meet their human interests.
The Sabbatarian practice of removing washing from the line before Sunday
continues because the transcendent authority it refers to is still present as a set
of associations in the minds of its people. However, this is dying out because of
alternative, scientific and more broadly secular constructions of transcendency;
what was once custom is now becoming part of a system of etiquette.

References

Bennett, M (1996) One and Two Percent: Scottish Gaelic Folklore Studies in
Newfoundland and Quebec. Proceedings from the conference FOLKLORE 150
at The University of Sheffield in Lore and Language, Vol. 15.

Boyer, P (2003) Religious thought and behaviour as by-products of brain

function. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Nickerson, RS. (1998) Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many
guises. Review of General Psychology.

Shweder, RA. (1977) Likeness and Likelihood in Everyday Thought: Magical

Thinking in Judgments About Personality. The Wenner Green Foundation for
Anthropological Research.

Simon, HA (1990) Invariants of human behavior. Annual review of psychology.

Subbotsky, E. (1994) Early rationality and magical thinking in preschoolers:

Space and time. British Journal of Developmental Psychology.