How do we create identities? How do we decide what kinds of things are taboo in society? How do we know what is clean or dirty? Have you ever thought about the fact that sometimes, we reinforce our choices and values through rebellion and/or opposition?

It might be obvious why some things are taboo, or at least there is some sense of rationalism surrounding those ideas. It’s taboo to eat out of the garbage, since the likelihood you will get sick is high and that’s where we put the things we wish to discard. But why are there taboos surrounding colors of clothing or beards, or types of clothing or lack of clothing? Is there a rational reason a man can’t wear a bright pink bikini on a hot summer day in American society? Why does this make us uncomfortable? Is there a reason that it’s not considered manly? Keep in mind, by reason, I mean an objective scientific one. Don’t worry, you’re not going to find a picture of me in a bright pink bikini below, I promise. But when you’re building a fictional world, understanding why a society formulates taboos and norms can be really useful.

In this entry on worldbuilding, we are going to examine a way to think about how people form their identities and cultures using the concept of schismogenesis.

(Note: You can find the earlier entries on worldbuilding, including podcasts and a Ted Talk here)

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What is Schismogenesis?

Coined by Anthropologist Gregory Bateson in the 1930s, the term schismogenesis means essentially creation through division. By looking at your identity and behavior, I acknowledge how we are different, and thus solidify who I am. This often manifests as opposition. The most obvious form of schismogenesis is the rebellion of teenagers, who form their identity based on challenging acceptable behavior. Through opposition, they create identity. But this isn’t just a teenager thing, cultures and people do this all the time. It’s why suppressing differences, can actually make them stronger. The identity becomes more legitimate, more solid, because you fight against it.

Let’s return to bikinis.

I (apparently) am the kind of man who wears a bright pink bikini in public, and you, (assuming you’re a male in this example and of the status quo in American society) do not. Thus, I am behaving inappropriately in society, and you are not. You, will try to get me to conform. You will probably mock me for my strange behavior. You may seek to make me feel ashamed of wearing my bright pink bikini out in public. I will do one of two things. Either, I will capitulate, and take off my bikini and switch to the culturally acceptable norm of swimming trunks, or I will continue my rebellion and seek to recruit others who think like me. Thus, I will form my identity through opposition.

These kinds of things happen every moment of every day across every culture. Power and resistance are constantly in play on every level. Think of all the debates going on right now in your culture about what people should and should not do. There are hundreds of topics to choose from.

Let’s look at a more serious example. Take the pork taboo. Lots of people speculate why both Jews and Muslims have a pork taboo. People have puzzled over this idea for centuries. This isn’t just limited to Jews or Muslims either. Why do some cultures say that certain foods are clean, and others are dirty? There are entire lists of foods that people eat in one location in the world, but gag just thinking about them in another.

(Note: If you want to read a whole book on this topic and you are an anthropology nerd, consider Mary Douglas’s award winning 1966 book Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo)

But why pork? Well, if you ask a Jew or a Muslim, the answer you’ll likely get is that pigs are filthy animals. They are living garbage disposals and love to live in their own shit and piss and eat whatever you put in front of them. Why, they ask, would you eat such a creature as this?

The reality though, is that pigs are not like this out in the wild. In fact, when I was doing research in a rural village in Mexico in the northern state of Nueve Leon back in 2008, the pigs they had in those villages were far from disgusting or dirty. They grazed in fields alongside the other animals and ate similar things. They didn’t live in mud, they lived alongside all the other animals. So the filthy ‘nature’ of the pig that is the central complaint of the taboo is something artificially created by human action, not nature. Often cultures and people will come up with logical explanations for their taboos to justify their practices.

That doesn’t mean we should disrespect our Jewish or Muslim friends by forcing pork on them. Every culture has things it forbids that defy rationality or reason. We all have superstitions and traditions that aren’t based on evidence. The point here is not to judge, but to understand how this works to better assist you in building fictional worlds.

One possible explanation for the pork taboo is schismogenesis. In the ancient world, there was a period for the Jewish people known as the Babylonian Captivity or the Babylonian Exile. Many Jews were forced to live under the control of the Babylonian empire after the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah beginning first around 598 BCE. The Babylonians captured and enslaved many of the Jewish people.

There were two large staples of the Babylonian diet that both became taboo under the Kashrut, the dietary restrictions of the Jewish people. The first was pork, and the second was horse. Both foods were common in Babylon at the time. The enslaved Jews did not consume this food previously. Thus, as their enslavement continued, they ate foods similar to that of their homeland, and not of those who enslaved them. This certainly contributed in at least some way to the prohibition, though it may not have been the only cause.

But here we see, at least in part, schismogenesis in action. The Jews, under the yoke of an oppressor, didn’t want to partake in the food of those who had enslaved them, hence, their identity surrounding their food taboo. Several generations lived under these conditions, then, when the Persians conquered the Babylonians and allowed Jews to return to Palestine, many of those ideas circulated into the wider culture. Food is common as an important identity marker in many cultures, this is especially true in populations that have been historically oppressed.

Now again, there are many debates on the pork taboo, and this is only one possible explanation. In fact, most cultural taboos and restrictions can come from several causes at once. But, schismogenesis is useful because it helps clear up confusion in a culture. If the enemy other is doing something, and you don’t want to be like the enemy, then you can avoid doing that thing. This solidifies who you are as a culture and with it, identity. In our case, it helps create more complex fictional characters.

Here are few things to consider if you want to employ the concept of schismogenesis in your fictional world.

1.    What are the core values of each of the fictional cultures you are building?

If you’re setting up a world where multiple major cultures will fight for control, then the first place to begin is where their core values lie.

–        What kinds of things are important to your culture?

–        What taboos do they have?

–        What things to they exaggerate or emphasize about their adversaries?

–        What qualities do they wish to cultivate in individuals on an ideal level?

–        What does their mythology say about core values (refer to Worldbuilding Part 4 – Six Things to Think about When Construction Myth in Fiction if you need help with this)?

If you take these things and sketch out what each culture is doing in these worlds, you will have a good place to see potential conflict between the different ideas of morality and/or taboo in the cultures.

This is especially true if you have a culture that has been conquered by another. Acts of rebellion don’t end at violence or protest. They can manifest in everyday experiences. In fact, when you stress a culture out, there is always a core group of people who will try to preserve important elements of their culture, hence, the rise of fundamentalists. They want to go back to the way things were before the changes came. It doesn’t matter that you can never truly return to the way things were, people want that old sense of safety and security of their cultural norms.

This is why we see groups like the Amish, whose very existence is in opposition to the changes wrought by modern technology. I grew up in part on the east coast, and not far outside of Philadelphia, it was common to see the Amish on the road in their horse and buggy, slowing down traffic. The way they choose to live is a form of schismogenesis. It might not feel subversive to us to live in that way, but to them, it is.

Which brings me to another point. Cultures aren’t homogeneous. There are all kinds of diverse approaches and ways to live within cultures. Be sure to consider that as you highlight the values and taboos of the larger culture above. You will want some wiggle room for resistance, for factionalism, even as larger conflicts between nations are happening. People disagree on pretty much everything, and sometimes that disagreement is a huge part of their identity.

2.    The minor differences matter

Yes, your cultures will argue over the big stuff. But the minor differences matter too. Every culture has a different protocol for body language, for dress, for the kinds of sounds and colors they like and dislike, and so on. Every little thing you do comes from making comparisons against others. While we focus on the things we like and enjoy, we often spend even more time on the things we don’t like or find disgusting as ways of acknowledging who we are.

Small things like how a culture eats can mark identity. Much of Europe didn’t adopt forks until the 17^th or 18^th century (depending on what region) because they were considered either unmanly or excessive. Just imagine, someone, at some point, was complaining about how feminine it was to use a fork. Yes, that really happened. Someone else decided to use a fork anyway, probably a teenager.

Even generations within cultures employ schismogenesis. Think about what different generations say about each other. I’m a millennial and hear constant complaints from older generations about us. I’m almost forty now, so obviously millennials aren’t that young anymore. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of complaints among my fellow millennials about Zoomers already. We make constant comparisons about all the little things we do differently.

You don’t have to pick big things for schismogenesis, in fact, sometimes a lot of little things add up to create stark differences. Remember, as I’ve said repeatedly in these entries, and in my book Build Better Worlds, culture is a performance. It’s a way of enacting practices to mark who you are and what you value. That isn’t just the big stuff, it’s all the little things too.

3.    Living within a cultural script

Every culture has a kind of script, a set of rules to live by that are both formal (laws) or informal (norms). Some cultures (like our own) make the concepts of choice and freedom paramount to their core values. But if you step outside the bounds of their norms, there are still all kinds of ways you can be disenfranchised. Think of the debates surrounding the right way to be a man in our own society. Forks and pink bikinis aside, these discussions aren’t about objective truth.

In fact, the irony of this discussion is that if choice and freedom were truly at the center of the debate, there wouldn’t be arguments about what makes a “real man”. Men would just go out and do whatever they wanted and that would be manly. These same scripts that proscribe masculinity limit agency (freedom of movement within a culture). There’s no freedom by living up to the expectations of a cultural script, but there is a sense of unity, an imagined comradery. (Note: See Benedict Anderson’s 1990 book Imagined Communities for the Anthropology Nerds out there) Though we may never meet most other Americans, there are certain behaviors and identity markers that are expected to establish a sense of unity across the culture.

This isn’t about good or bad, this is what cultures do. How a culture maintains itself, or how it changes, is an endless conversation taking form in every arena of every culture. These masculine norms aren’t about freedom, it is about expectations, about clearing up confusion to make identifying what is male and what is female in clear terms. Humans in general like things simple. Unfortunately, very little about humans is simple. We might idealize certain behaviors or how many genders we think we are, but of course, certain behaviors that are beneficial and unifying to one group will naturally be oppressive and divisive for another. This is exactly why, opposition can be a core part of identity.

With all that in mind, take a moment to consider, what kind of cultural scripts are used in your fictional world. There are certainly trends among humans. Male domination, though not universal, is common in the modern world. There are still matriarchies out there, but they are few and far between because of the larger patterns of empire and conquest.

A few things to consider with cultural scripts:

–        Remember Cognitive Maps (from the last post on worldbuilding) and how biological differences, magic systems, or superpowers will necessitate different brains and thus, different cultures.

–        Different political systems, like the matriarchy mentioned above, would have different scripts

–        Different economic systems, like a gift economy, or a system that uses potlatching, would have different scripts about what wealth and power look like

–        Different religions, for example, one without deities, are going to focus on different scripts.

–        Remember that culture is holistic, that every part of culture connects into every other part of culture, the scripts about behavior and identity will mirror all these elements put together

4.   Enforcing identity and Solidifying Resistance

In order for a cultural script to be useful, it has to be enforced. In some societies, there are laws about how people dress. They enforce what activities different groups can participate in, how they should appear in public, and so on. In addition to these formal laws, or in a situation where there isn’t written law, rumors and gossip act as a kind of social surveillance to enforce expected behavior. Gossip is likely the oldest form of surveillance and uses shame and guilt as a weapon against anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into cultural scripts. If that sounds like high school, you’re not wrong. Humans have been doing this to each other since we were… well, humans.

Remember, these scripts are also created in part because a culture doesn’t want to behave like the other. They want to mark themselves as distinct and different. They don’t want to engage in the behaviors of the enemy other, dress like the enemy, eat like the enemy, or even talk like the enemy. Groups that are focused on differences will often advocate for exclusionary rules or policies that limit the kinds of diversity possible. They will shame and embarrass those who don’t fit in the mold. Often, they have a fear that this other, this adversary, will creep in and take their culture away from them by changing things or forcing them to change.

We even do this on a large scale. The 1978 book, Orientalism, by Edwards Said, highlights the perceptions of Europe and its false dichotomy of the Eastern world vs Western world. The book is an attempt to critique our stereotypes of the Eastern world, and how empire, colonialism, and bias played a role in our understanding of world history and cultural analysis.

According to Said, men of the Orient were portrayed as culturally backward, physically weak, and feminine. This reinforced the ideas of Western masculinity. Of course, perceptions of the men of the Orient were just stereotypes. And nothing robs people of their freedom quite like a stereotype.  Raj from The Big Bang Theory, and Fez from That 70s Show, are stereotypical examples of Orientalism in action. Both the characters struggle to understand Western culture and are awkward. Both characters spend a lot more time with the women of the group and struggle to relate to the men in the same way. Both characters are mocked for their physical weakness.

Cultures will often create assumed cultural scripts for their enemy. We know these scripts as stereotypes. We expect the enemy to fit only within these boxes, and are often surprised when they don’t. This is not a product of only one culture, all cultures do this. We use our norms and rules to compare ourselves to the cultures we don’t like because they are a direct enemy, or because we consider them less civilized. But it works in a paternal dimension too. Paternalism in this case is the notion that we are more rational or advanced and must help civilize the “savage”.

What are the benefits of using Schismogenesis in fiction?

Employing schismogenesis creates all kinds of fertile ground for storytelling. There will be characters who highlight the differences between each group and hold conservative views about the way things have always been. There will be characters who think that some of these arbitrary things are well… arbitrary. They will accuse the conservatives of living in the past and highlight the ways that the past was ugly. These are the progressives of your society. They often advocate against these kinds of differences. However, they will also employ schismogenesis against those who they disagree with too, often the conservatives of their culture.

Just because you are liberal or progressive doesn’t mean you’re free of bias. No one is free of bias and oversimplistic thinking. We all generalize the people we disagree with. I catch myself doing it all the time. After all, it’s much easier to disagree with someone if you take away the nuance and complexity of their argument and create strawmen that are easy to knock down. We all have things we are bias about and we even know that some of them are arbitrary. Your characters absolutely should too.

There’s a third group in a mix, the ones who stand in the middle. These bicultural individuals (they can certainly have more than two cultural backgrounds) don’t have a specific set of rules or scripts to follow for their identity or they have more than one. Individuals like this are born in the middle of multiple scripts, being forced to discern how to move through the world. They could be mixed ethnicities and thus get culture from each parent, or perhaps they are an immigrant or refugee born in one culture, but now living in another. Every person who stands in the middle will take unique positions on different aspects of their identity and culture. Immigrants should be just as diverse and complex in their approach to the world as characters who are monocultural. Some immigrants may take on the dominant norms as an act of rebellion to their parents. Others may take on the traditions of their homeland to resist assimilation. Schismogenesis in the real world creates all kinds of diverse identities and experiences and in fiction, richer characters, backstories, and worldbuilding.

Consider:

–        How do your characters compare themselves to other cultures and individuals?

–        Why do they make that comparison? Are they jealous? Are they fascinated? Is the grass greener? Is the other more barbaric?

–        Do they see some good things and some bad things about the other?

–        What generation are they a part of? Are there changes in technology for that culture or maybe some new cultural practice or experience has arrived?

–        Has contact with another culture happened recently?

–        Has there been a change in the political or economic structure?

Some Final Thoughts

Norms change. We don’t consider forks unmanly anymore. Though I guess the jury is still out on men in pink bikinis. Every generation gains new ideas, and loses some old ones. Maybe in the era of social media things are changing faster than before, but we need a much longer view, in terms of decades, to really understand what social media is doing to us. Sometimes, changes that appear bad in the beginning create really interesting changes in the long term.  

In building your world you could start out with one group of norms and rules for a society and then change the power dynamics of the situation to suddenly force those norms out. Brandon Sanderson does this masterfully in the Stormlight archives. At the beginning of the series, having light-colored eyes automatically means you are a person of rank and privilege. Being a poor light eyes is far better than being a wealthy dark eyes. Light eyes or dark, both groups have their own internal hierarchies as well. But, as the series goes on, and the return of old magic changes the colors of some people’s eyes, the power dynamic of eye color changes, and many of the characters are forced to confront the arbitrary nature of the light eye, dark eye, dichotomy, each in their own way.

The best stories are ones that show truth. The truth about most of what we do as humans is that it’s arbitrary. We have certain standards and taboos that do serve purposes. Some help protect people from harm in both short-term and long-term situations. Eating garbage or marrying your sibling are not wise moves and thus those taboos are useful.

However, many things we hold as important are really just cultural preferences. Loving your culture isn’t wrong. It’s just that these things don’t have any root in objective truth. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have value. There are many beautiful traditions the world over that some consider strange, while others find unity and comfort in them.

It’s all complicated. Wonderfully complicated. I think too often we look at complexity and throw up our arms and say, it’s too much effort to understand. But I think it’s better to be curious. But then, that is why I became an Anthropologist.

Writing honestly means to look at the world and understanding it for what it is. The world you create in fiction, is a reflection of who you are. Sometimes that means to create the best worlds, we have to step outside of what’s comfortable or easy. Good worldbuilding means you need to understand the cultures you’re creating. You need to hold what they see as sacred in your mind. Immerse yourself in their worlds. Live through your characters and embrace the wonderful complexity of the world you’re creating. Maybe try a little schismogenesis on for size.

After all, what’s more fun than being a creator?

Happy Worldbuilding!

P.S. I lied about the picture of me in a bikini…  

This is the most recent entry in the Worldbuilding series. Go back to Worldbuilding Part 6: Cognitive Maps, Magic, and Super Powers or browse the full Worldbuilding archive for all seven entries. For a comprehensive guide to anthropological worldbuilding check out Build Better Worlds. And if you want hands-on help applying these ideas to your specific project, I offer worldbuilding consultations – the first 15 minutes are free.