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The Copy Generic

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Scott MacLochlainn discusses the concept of the generic and its role in making meaning in the world.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 18, 2023

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This video video is a transcript of a discussion on a book that originates from the speaker's research, which began as a dissertation focused on religious competition among various Christian denominations on the island of Mendoro in the Philippines. The research investigates how people navigate the presence of diverse Christian groups and missionaries, including assessing their shared backgrounds and religious narratives.

The author explores the concept of the "generic," which emerged during research involving a Bible translation workshop with various Christian translators and indigenous tribes. This video video concept reflects how people often rely on generic frameworks to engage with faith and conversion, simplifying complex religious identities.

The speaker elaborates on how their fieldwork expanded beyond the Philippines to include research in Los Angeles, focusing on prop designers who create generic brands for films, highlighting the significance of the "generic" in everyday life and its cultural implications.

The book is structured in two parts: the first explains the concept of the generic, while the second provides an ethnographic examination of its application within Christian communities. The author aims to push back against dominant narratives in anthropology that focus on sensational or attention-grabbing subjects, advocating for the importance of understanding mundane, everyday practices and cultural frameworks.

Ultimately, the book seeks to broaden the understanding of the "generic" as a valuable aspect of people's lives, encouraging readers to reflect on the importance of what typically gets classified as ordinary or unremarkable, and to recognize its relevance in the social and cultural contexts in which they exist.

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Here are some key quotes from the video:

1. **Convideo of Research**:
- "I was interested in how people navigated an influx of different Christian denominations and missionaries... on the island of Mendoro in the Philippines."

2. **Navigating Religious Competition**:
- "I was really interested in how people navigated religious competition essentially."

3. **Shared Christian Background**:
- "They all began to rely on this kinda shared Christian... backdrop... that they didn't really have to kind of reinvent the wheel."

4. **Generic versus Specific**:
- "Should one's fidelity to the original kind of the video of the Bible, or is the fidelity to the kind, the spirit of the Bible so that people understand it?"

5. **Debate on Translation**:
- "This was framed as the olive versus mango problem to me."

6. **Interest in the Generic**:
- "I really became interested in the generic, uh, more broadly."

7. **Classical Ethnographic Approach**:
- "My research is classically anthropological and ethnographic."

8. **Focus Beyond Worship**:
- "I always wanted to get past that, kind of beyond that... to the more prosaic, mundane work of a church."

9. **Trust in Research**:
- "Finding alternative modes of trust... given that a lot of the forms of trust in these communities is predicated on, you are one of us."

10. **Importance of the Generic**:
- "I think it's of huge importance... in our lives of how we sort through things in the world."

11. **Everyday Concept**:
- "The generic, as I understand it, is both a concept and things in the world."

12. **Cultural Value of the Generic**:
- "In this book, I'm making a case for the generic as immensely intrinsically valuable to us."

13. **Navigating Specificity**:
- "What spaces do we need specificity and what spaces do we not need specificity?"

14. **Ethnographic Work**:
- "I move between doing ethnographic work in Los Angeles and Hollywood to doing archival work in the Philippines."

15. **Conclusion on the Generic**:
- "I want people to think and engage about what we determine to be compelling and important."

These quotes capture the essence of the speaker's research focus, methodology, and the conceptual framework they are developing around the idea of the "generic" within various cultural convideos.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Most, people's first books, this, rose out.

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Uh, initially out of my, dissertation,

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dissertation research.

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And, for that research, I was interested in how,

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people navigated an influx,

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of different Christian denominations

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and missionaries, on the island

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of Mendoro in the Philippines.

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And because over the last 20 years, there had been multiple,

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different groups had that kind

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of descended on the island,

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which predominantly is Catholic in the lowlands,

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and then there's indigenous communities in the uplands,

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with their own different kind of religious, histories

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and religious practices.

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So I was really interested in

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how people navigated religious competition essentially.

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Um, and also how they conceptualized

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and understood the religious other,

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but not really the classic religious author

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of like Christianity versus Islam,

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but these kind small minutia of difference kind of Mormons

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or de church of latter-Day Saints versus Methodist versus

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seventh-Day Adventist versus Born again evangelicals.

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That is how they kind of navigated that.

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And so during my research, I really found that

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what had happened was they all began

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to rely on this kinda shared Christian, backdrop,

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which was sort of kinda shorthands this little template,

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that they didn't really have to kind of reinvent the wheel

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as it were when it came to converting, kind

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of lapsed Catholics

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or indeed conducting missionary work in the upland regions,

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because everybody had kind of an unspecific, non-specific,

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kinda generic, backdrop.

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And so that was kind of, I, that's

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what I was kinda studying in my research,

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but struggled with it, to understand.

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I had to kind of conceptualize it.

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And it was when I, did research

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with a Bible translation workshop in Mendoro

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where different Christian translators, some Europeans,

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some Americans, some Filipino, would meet a couple

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of times a year, with the elders

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of these indigenous kind of, so-called ma Manian tribes,

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mostly, ol Bhi,

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who would come down from the mountains

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and for a couple of weeks they would all work

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on translating the Bible.

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And it was during that workshop

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where there was conversations

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and debates about how best to translate the Bible

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for these indigenous, communities.

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And one of the conversations that kind of jumped out at me,

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was there they were, see some

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of the translators were seeking to,

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strip away the metaphors of the biblical language.

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And this kind of raised, did this question,

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should is one's fidelity to the original kind of the text

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of the Bible, or is the fidelity to the kind, the spirit

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of the Bible so that people understand it?

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'cause a lot of the metaphors in the,

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in the text wouldn't be applicable to,

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people in the Philippines.

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And this was framed as the olive versus mango problem to me.

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Whereas the olive in the Bible,

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there's no real, there's no olives.

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This does not have this kind of metaphorical resonance

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or kind of the olive branch and so forth, in mano.

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Um, so should one translate that to something like a mango,

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which has the same kind

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of ubiquity universality is often pulled into kind

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of figurative, and metaphorical language.

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And so this kind of debate, went on

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and I was really taken with this concept of the generic,

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and that this is a useful way, to understand, a lot

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of what was going on before me.

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Um, so that's where the, the idea of the generic kind

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of arose for me.

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Now, this book isn't actually, wholly,

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based on my dissertation research.

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So when I got back from my two years

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of ethnographic field work, I started doing research in,

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in Los Angeles in Hollywood,

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and working with prop designers, who were trying

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to come up with generic brands for onscreen,

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to avoid trademark infringement.

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So they would have to come up with these different ways of,

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you know, coming up with a generic version of Heineken beer

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or a generic version of Coca-Cola, and so forth.

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And so I really became interested in the generic,

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more broadly.

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And so this book is, is split into two parts.

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One is kind of an accounting, for the concept

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of generic, what is the generic,

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how do we use it, how do we think about it?

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And then the second part is more aligned with my,

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research in the Philippines,

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and is sort of proffers a kind of a test,

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an ethnographic test of what does an ethnography

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of the generic, look like.

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And so that second part of the book,

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is about kinda Christian communities

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where we see the generic, how they use the generic,

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including the Bible workshop,

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and other kind of Christian spaces in, in some sense.

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Uh, the book is a kind

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of cla My research is classically

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anthropological and ethnographic.

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Um, it was based on kind of two years of research and

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after that di different parts of research as well

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as archival, work.

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The, and so in, in, in, in, in many ways it,

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it looked quite traditional, right?

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So I'm not from the Philippines, I'm the kind

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of classic outsider I had to learn the language kind

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of was the gala and parts in parts

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and kind of local languages.

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Um, although not as well as I would've hoped.

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Um, and definitely had to navigate this, this space,

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this kinda ethnographic space from the outside.

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Um, one of the things that I was really in, in,

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which was important to me

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was in thinking about Christianity.

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And when one starts to work with, Christian communities

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and Christian groups, there's the attention is put on

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services and worshiping, and these types of spaces.

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And I always wanted to get past that, kind of beyond that.

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Um, and I kind of always wanted to get to the more prosaic,

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mundane work of a church, for example, rather than

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the, the performance

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and the performativity of kind of worshiping practices.

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And that really was kind of, again, classically ethnographic

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of getting to know people, of navigating the fact

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that I myself am not religious.

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I was baptized in, in, in the Catholic church,

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as many Irish people, are, but not practicing.

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And that navigating, that working with people

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and trying to take their beliefs,

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and their practices in with full, full sincerity

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and seriousness, while not necessarily, having the forms

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of faith and believing that they would want from me.

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And so methodologically that be, that became kind of front

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and center, for many, many months of my research

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and kind of navigating that

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and finding,

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honestly finding alternative modes of trust between those,

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I was working with my interlocutors,

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and myself, given that a lot of the forms

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of trust in these communities is predicated

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on, you are one of us.

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You're a Methodist. I'm a Methodist, you're a Mormon.

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I'm a Mormon. And so there was a lot of that outside

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inside space that I, that I navigated, methodologically.

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The where I think it becomes interesting with the,

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with the generic is my motivation, for this project

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or in its original conception in terms

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of Christian communities, but also, and with this book,

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but also with my just fundamental interest in anthropology,

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was to move past,

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how we would understand the compelling, the, the,

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the conceptually hot

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or really of interest, the, the types of spaces

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that kind of media attention sort of lands on.

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I was interested in anthropology

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and methodologically in kind of pushing past that.

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Uh, growing up I was always, fascinated

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by long form journalism when we used to have newspapers,

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the large, large Sunday newspapers,

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and just kind of spending all day finding out about these,

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these places and a story.

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But I was always left with this kind of lingering feeling

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of, well, what happens then?

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And after the journalist leaves town,

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after the, the storm destroys the, the, the, the community

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and all the media attention lands

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and we find out about people's lives,

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and then we're onto the next kind of day's newspapers.

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Um, and anthropology offers to me, this,

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what we would understand is ethnography, which is much,

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much longer, which slower work

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and, not as inherently

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or superficially compelling or sexy

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or hot, that it was, it, it leaned into

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what might have been marked as boring, banal,

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and so forth.

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And I, I thought that was morally important to attend to.

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And this book does come out of that as well,

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in thinking about the generic to, again, to kind

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of push back against the, the market of ideas

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of what's important, what regions of the world are

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interesting to us, what types of stories are interesting

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to us, and to kind of push past that

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and to account for the so social worlds that we inhabit

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and that we live and navigate that

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don't necessarily tick those boxes of,

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of what is compelling.

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And so methodologically

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and conceptually, I think I was always trying to, to,

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to find those spaces.

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Um, and even in, in indeed where I, I,

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I worked in the Philippines, in the communities

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that I worked with, I, I didn't seek to try

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and understand the, the religious practices in communities

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that would be famous in for, even for in the Philippines,

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people who are nailing themselves

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to the crucifix and so forth.

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These kind of famous ones I kind of wanted to work with,

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you know, the banal, the, the Methodists, the, the,

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the normal, the not exactly the most exciting spaces,

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to kind of push back against this evaluative space of

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what is exciting and not exciting and,

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and kind of the ethically yeah, to ethically

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account for these other spaces.

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And, and, and that was very important.

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The generic, as I understand it, is both a concept

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and things in the world.

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Uh, I, I talk about the generic

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because for most people, we, we deal

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with the generic every day in indeed in English speaking,

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communities.

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We use the term regularly.

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There are things that we understand collectively as generic.

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There's things we think of, we, we list

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and label things generic.

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Um, so it's an everyday concept

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and yet hasn't really been foregrounded, kind of in

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with intellectual import and kind of academic interest.

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But I think it's of huge importance, in our lives of

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how we sort through things in the world.

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It does have its histories and kind of taxonomies.

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Um, it's kind of closely related to genus.

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Um, and these, these kind of, these typologies of

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that came up with, yeah, different ways of sorting, kind

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of classification of nature and so forth.

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But we all go

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around every day thinking certain things are generic.

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We have famous examples. Elevator music is

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like generic music.

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Um, for some of us, a lot

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of pop music would be generic music for other people.

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It's not generic. So we do use it as a way

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of sorting the world, with what spaces do we need

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specificity and what spaces do we not need specificity,

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in what spaces is these kind of

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universal shared backdrops, these kind of templates

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and shorthands, what spaces they do a lot of work for us.

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Um, and then when do we need specificity?

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And so I was kind of really interested in that,

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but not necessarily in thinking about generic

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as something foreign to us in our lives.

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It's very, very grounded.

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So in the book, I really do start with like elevator music,

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and I talk about, I talk about movies in Hollywood

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and how they navigate purchasing rights to trademarks,

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how they avoid them,

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and how these kind of prop designers sitting in prop studios

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in LA sometimes by hand, sometimes on, on computers, are,

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are designing different cans

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and drinks for people to hold on screen, to avoid and,

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and, and, and negotiate all of this legality.

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Um, so it's very accessible in, in that sense.

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What I'm interested in, in, in the generic as a concept is

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one, it's relationship to these kind

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of universal shared worlds we inhabit.

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Um, and it's, and then it's relationship to specificity,

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but then also this evaluative space of generic

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that like is the generic, the culturally discarded, the,

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the, the, the parts of culture that are kind

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of lingering too long in the world

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that we just no longer want to be around.

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Um, because for the most part we think of generic

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as like not good, it's not as valuable as other things.

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And so, but in this book, I'm making a case for the generic

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as immensely intrinsically valuable to us in all

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of these sorts of different spaces.

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So I move between,

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doing ethnographic work in Los Angeles

13:29.155 --> 13:33.975
and Hollywood, to doing archival work in, in, in,

13:33.975 --> 13:37.455
in the Philippines, thinking about, for example,

13:37.815 --> 13:42.415
a long history of the legality, legality

13:42.415 --> 13:43.855
or in around indigenous rights

13:44.035 --> 13:45.495
and the kind of subjugation of,

13:45.595 --> 13:47.455
of indigenous communities in the Philippines

13:48.635 --> 13:50.455
by defining them as non-Christian

13:50.515 --> 13:53.295
and I talk about this Supreme Court case in the Philippines

13:54.035 --> 13:55.695
in 1919,

13:55.825 --> 13:59.415
which was debating whether indigenous communities

14:00.035 --> 14:02.975
in those days kind of labeled savages and primitive

14:02.975 --> 14:07.815
and so forth and so forth, was should they be legally called

14:08.115 --> 14:11.895
and labeled with the appellation, of non-Christian.

14:12.155 --> 14:15.135
And they agreed that that was the best descriptor of them.

14:15.755 --> 14:19.255
But what that does is it brings into focus this whole world

14:19.255 --> 14:23.455
of what's marked and unmarked to be non-Christian for all

14:23.455 --> 14:24.455
of these indigenous communities

14:24.455 --> 14:25.735
to be marked as non-Christian.

14:26.365 --> 14:29.735
What does that say about the other generic space

14:29.955 --> 14:30.975
of Christian?

14:31.315 --> 14:34.735
It empowers that. It, it it, there's this huge power,

14:34.835 --> 14:38.135
to be unmarked, to be non-specific, to not have

14:38.135 --> 14:39.175
to be specified.

14:39.595 --> 14:43.655
And so here in the states, we find the, the politics

14:43.655 --> 14:45.735
of marked and unmarked all around us.

14:45.995 --> 14:49.215
For example, the, the NBA,

14:49.215 --> 14:50.695
the National Basketball Association,

14:50.715 --> 14:54.445
we all talk about the NBA, the women's NBA is the WNBA,

14:55.325 --> 14:57.665
the masculine, space,

14:57.805 --> 15:00.465
of the NBA doesn't even have to be marked, right?

15:00.535 --> 15:04.625
It's not the MNBA, it's just the NBA, which of course,

15:04.955 --> 15:08.465
we're all very, very accustomed with, with the power

15:08.565 --> 15:11.945
and the force and kind of unspecified force,

15:12.325 --> 15:15.705
of the politics, ge gender politics in the us, which

15:16.405 --> 15:19.465
in many parts of the world, which leans into this kind

15:19.465 --> 15:23.025
of generic power of, of, of kind

15:23.025 --> 15:24.985
of male patriarchal spaces.

15:25.445 --> 15:27.705
Um, so that's just kind of like an example of

15:27.705 --> 15:29.785
where we see the generic all around us.

15:30.085 --> 15:34.605
Um, and then of course, as I mentioned, I also do, kind

15:34.605 --> 15:39.485
of try to conceptually figure the uses of the generic,

15:40.025 --> 15:41.845
in, in the Philippines in these

15:41.845 --> 15:42.965
kind of different Christian spaces.

15:43.345 --> 15:45.845
But what's really important for me is that the,

15:47.635 --> 15:49.225
there are spaces in which people

15:50.225 --> 15:51.905
explicitly think about the generic.

15:51.975 --> 15:55.185
They explicitly are engaging in projects of trying

15:55.205 --> 15:58.105
to cut out, define, and employ the generic.

15:58.445 --> 15:59.705
For example, in Hollywood,

15:59.775 --> 16:03.425
they're having conversations about how to produce generic,

16:03.965 --> 16:06.145
types of, props.

16:06.685 --> 16:08.345
But then there's other spaces where we can kind

16:08.345 --> 16:09.625
of see the generic at work

16:10.135 --> 16:12.345
without it necessarily being wholly

16:12.345 --> 16:13.665
made explicit as a concept.

16:14.205 --> 16:15.785
Um, and I didn't encounter that.

16:16.085 --> 16:18.385
So I think just to think about shorthands

16:18.385 --> 16:21.105
and templates, we all use shorthands in our lives.

16:22.055 --> 16:25.065
What I argue in this book is those shorthands that we use,

16:25.135 --> 16:27.705
whether just just personally with us and our friends

16:27.705 --> 16:30.745
and family, or more collectively as a, as societies,

16:31.685 --> 16:34.145
that's predicated on the generic, right?

16:34.325 --> 16:37.025
In order to have shorthands, we need to have these kind of

16:37.595 --> 16:39.945
tacit agreements that don't need to be specified.

16:39.945 --> 16:41.385
They don't even need to be marked.

16:41.965 --> 16:45.145
Um, and so that's the space that I'm trying to cut out with

16:45.615 --> 16:48.865
what I think I want the readers to take away from this book.

16:49.205 --> 16:53.545
Um, aside from, en enjoying reading it

16:53.605 --> 16:55.305
and learning all about these,

16:55.305 --> 16:57.425
different spaces in the Philippines and in Hollywood

16:57.425 --> 17:02.065
and indeed, Ireland as well, I write about, to kind

17:02.105 --> 17:04.625
of go back to to, to what I was saying previously, I,

17:05.105 --> 17:10.055
I do want people to be, to have a space to kind of think

17:10.235 --> 17:14.775
and engage about what we do, determine to be compelling

17:15.115 --> 17:18.895
and important, and the given the worlds,

17:18.895 --> 17:21.455
the media worlds we, inhabit

17:21.455 --> 17:24.975
and live in, these days, I think it's useful

17:24.975 --> 17:27.815
to push back against this sort of,

17:27.845 --> 17:29.815
this global media eye which kind

17:29.815 --> 17:31.295
of decides this is important today

17:31.595 --> 17:33.575
and tomorrow it's not going to be important.

17:33.765 --> 17:35.055
This will be important, and this will be,

17:35.155 --> 17:37.415
and we, we are just find ourselves cycling through

17:38.235 --> 17:43.175
and I think often missing an underlying, kinda space

17:43.355 --> 17:44.855
of what is relevant to us.

17:45.115 --> 17:48.055
And I, I think to think about the generic hopefully,

17:48.985 --> 17:50.805
Uh, to Ethnographically account for it

17:50.805 --> 17:53.805
and to conceptually account for it affords people a space

17:54.385 --> 17:58.915
to, to think about really what are the hierarchies

17:59.615 --> 18:02.915
of what is important to us in thinking about

18:03.815 --> 18:05.195
the social worlds we inhabit.

18:05.415 --> 18:07.515
And ultimately that's, that's what it kind of wants people

18:07.515 --> 18:08.075
to think about.

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