Creating a "Culture-Cohort": Methodological Challenges in Historical Sociology and the Case of West China Missionaries


Amy Kaler, University of Alberta

This paper examines the epistemological and practical challenges of delineating a cohort of individuals for the purposes of generating a “group biography” or collective account of experiences. These challenges include identifying both the essential characteristics of the cohort for the purposes of study and the inclusion criteria. For the purpose of cultural history, these inclusion criteria may not be limited to time and space, or demographic co-ordinates, but also involve individuals’ affiliation with particular institutions and their identification with particular social and political projects. As an example, we discuss the creation of a cohort for a forthcoming book on the political imaginary of North American Protestant missionaries who were active in Sichuan, China, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Focusing in particular on the Canadian members of this cohort, in this paper we describe how this cohort was defined not only by who they were and where they went, but also by their shared connection to specific Canadian educational institutions (such as Victoria College, UofT), denomination and inter-denominational Christian churches and networks (such as the YMCA and the Student Volunteer Movement), identification with a particular ethnic identity (as Scottish-descended settlers of the second or third generation) and perhaps most elusive, as adherents to political and intellectual projects understood as “progressive” or “modern” within a religious context, such as pacifism or attachment to the promise of science and impartial rationality to mend the problems of the world. We argue that these shared characteristics make up a “cultural cohort”, and we consider what it means to be part of a historically significant group like a cultural cohort, and why this sort of cohort analysis matters for doing sociology at the intersection of history and biography, in C Wright Mills’ words.

Non-presenting author: Cory Willmott, University of Southern Illinois - Evansville

This paper will be presented at the following session: