Personal Relations in Creating Boundaries

Abstract

An implicit goal of the church was to maintain the stability of the Christian community in Bulaq. This entailed exhorting Christians to support one another emotionally and materially, to resolve conflicts within the community, and to provide resources that, although minimal, might keep members from defecting. Joseph (1999) cautions that personhoods emerge as neither individualist nor corporatist and that human beings have to be socialized to value linkage, bonding, and sociability. This chapter looks not so much at how these patterns develop but what their implications are once they become norms. Specifically it looks at how patterns of personal relations encourage support within the community and in their own way create boundaries between Christian and Muslim communities. As Barth (1969) notes, identity is a relational process involving boundaries that define who is to be included or excluded-frequently by using kinship idioms to clarify the categories.