Tribal Scholarship
posted by Nate Oman
I have put up a couple of posts here on my on-going research on the resolution of civil disputes in ecclesiastical courts and Mormon legal history. Earlier this week, I presented my research to a faculty workshop at William & Mary. (I’ve also put up a copy of my preliminary research on SSRN.) In addition to ordinary trepidation of the untenured presenting research before the future members of the tenure committee, I had an extra level of anxiety as I presented my paper.
My research has focused in on the resolution of civil disputes in Mormon ecclesiastical courts in the nineteenth century. My anxiety comes from the fact that I am a Mormon. I think that the stories that I have uncovered are inherently interesting and give us a way of looking at the law from a strange new angle. On the other hand, part of the reason that I find these stories so interesting is because in some sense, they are my stories, the stories of my people, and their history. The mixture of identity and research creates a risk of parochialism. What seems important to you for tribal reasons may strike others as trivial and self-absorbed. When doing work related to Mormon history this anxiety is hard wired into the historiography, which in the past was structured around polemics for or against Mormonism and in the recent past has been structured around a self-conscious attempt to eschew this past. (That which you flee ends up defining you.)
There isn’t anything particularly unique, of course, about my story. Any time that scholarship intersects with identity the same concerns arise. Think of the charges of parochialism leveled against critical race theory, for example. And of course, tribal self-interest frequently is narrow, insular, and parochial, particularly when the assumed audience always consists of fellow members of the tribe. Still, at its best I think that the identification of author and subject can create a passion and empathy that is seldom achieved by an objective outside voice.
My presentation went well. My colleagues seemed interested, and I got some very useful feedback. I plan on continuing my tribal research agendas. But I am also writing articles on the philosophy of contract law, a subject with no tribe of which I am aware.
June 8, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Posted in: Law and Humanities, Law School (Scholarship), Religion
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Responses (2)
Patrick S. O'Donnell - June 8, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Well, until it becomes truly universal or global, contract law is parochial and provincial, i.e., tribal, to the extent that it is Anglo-American. However, with the global consolidation of capitalism, I suppose the day it might be deemed universal is not far off.
Kaimi - June 9, 2007 at 7:47 pm
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