Tim gives voice to a version of this question that I’ve seen a few others say and probably several others have thought without actually saying it. This point gets to one of the big pieces in the dearth-of-female-bibliobloggers puzzle. This is about identity formation and setting boundary markers (can you help us out, Brian?). When it comes to biblioblogging, who is in and who is out? What is our “ruler” for considering a blog to be appropriately focused upon academic biblical studies?
Tim points to my previous post where I am reaching out to the Emerging Women community (see the great comments coming in over there). He highlights something I have said, italicizing it in this way: “I’m not certain that any would qualify as focused upon “academic biblical studies” (I haven’t searched through all of them), but they are definitely a collection of blogs of interest to our field.” Thank you , Tim, for giving me the opportunity to clarify the statement. In response, I would emphasize the words “I’m not certain” and “I haven’t searched through all of them.” Please read on . . .
I had been thinking about the very question that Tim so eloquently states in his post (one of the best posts on this topic thus far). Given the freedom of blogging, I cannot imagine setting a solid boundary line. I think for any blog to be considered a biblioblog, though, a few questions should be pondered:
- How many posts are on biblical studies in a given time period? Say, a month.
- What is the ratio of biblical studies posts to other sorts of posts?
- How tangentially related are those “other sorts of posts” to biblical studies?
- What qualifies as a post about “biblical studies”? We are not including every person on the internet that sometimes says interesting things about the Bible. No, we need some academic interaction.
- What, then, do we consider “academic interaction”?
It’s a bit of a balancing act. The thing with Jim’s blog is that, yes, it’s eclectic. But buried in those posts about the evils of one news bit or another are some posts that do indeed “interact” with academic issues of biblical studies. Maybe Jim’s “interaction” is more ranting than measured dialogue, but apparently that’s acceptable for biblioblogging (since Jim’s blog is accepted as a biblioblog). The key, I think, is that Jim refers to scholars and scholarship and people doing stupid things with archaeology. He addresses issues that are of interest to the academic world.
What I was uncertain about in the quote highlighted by Tim was whether we could all be on the same page about what defines an appropriate focus on academic biblical studies.
I think that if we can find women who are interacting (or ranting or whatever) with academic issues of biblical studies at least a few times a month and those posts are not totally overshadowed by the rest of their other interests (any more than Jim’s academically-related posts are), then we have found new bibliobloggers! So, I am suggesting we place Jim’s blog on the “margins,” in a sense, defining him as a good boundary marker. We are saying, “Okay, we’ll let Jim be Jim, but that’s probably as academically diluted as we want to go.” I mean no offense to Jim when I say these things. He is certainly confident and comfortable with his own approach to blogging and academics!
So, let the hunt go on for new female bibliobloggers! I will suggest two places to begin looking. I have already mentioned the Emerging Women community. I will also highlight the RevGalBlogPals ring of blogs (see the “Our Blogs” section on the right sidebar).
Why is it important to draw lines around a given blogging community? Such lines are by their nature arbitrary. How about this, if somebody wants to be called a biblioblogger, then they’re in the club. Blogging communities are organic by their nature. They develop when a certain group of bloggers begins to interact, and they are accessible to anybody who stumbles across them and wishes to participate. By all means invite others to be a part of any given blogging community, but it is ludicrous to suggest that these kinds of things can be dealt with through formal definitions and the like.
Very insightful post, Pat. Years ago there was some discussion on the prerequisites of a biblioblog. I had suggested that around 2/3 of what’s posted should be biblical studies related, though I’ve violated this rule myself (not least this past month!).
Colin: Thanks for another thoughtful comment. A few things . . .
First, Why do you include yourself and why are you welcomed? What do you feel makes you a biblioblogger? It is certainly more than just a feeling or a statement. If you blogged about sea urchins and not a lick about biblical studies, but called yourself a biblioblogger, I’m not sure you’d really be accepted as one (not that there’s anything wrong with blogging about sea urchins). So, what is it?
Secondly, I don’t care about policing. I have no interest in exclusion. There is no biblioblog police, but I imagine if someone didn’t really fit the expectations of what a biblioblog is (e.g., Steve’s Sea Urchin Heaven), then people simply wouldn’t read the blog. They wouldn’t have anything relevant for the carnival, certainly wouldn’t qualify to stand out as a biblioblogger of the month, and the folks at Biblioblog Top 50 could make their own decision based upon feedback that they receive.
Finally, about those who don’t wish to be included, I would want find people that could possibly fit our biblioblogging communal identity and start interacting with them. I would link to them and recommend them. If they don’t feel like engaging in this community and getting the extra traffic/dialogue, that’s their choice. But I don’t see anything wrong with offering it.
The thing is, these fuzzy parameters that I suggest are part of my motivations to find more blogs. I’m actually trying to broaden the category as far as it can go–trying to include more people.
Colin, thanks for that comment. I appreciate the thought and I agree with much of what you have said. The interactions I have with other bloggers is most often quite organic. We are in one another’s readers, we something interesting, we interact.
But we also have these communally defining “events”: ranking of biblioblogs, carnival of biblioblogs, biblioblogger of the month. This goes beyond an organic process of natural interaction. In each of these monthly “events,” choices need to be made as far as what we call a “biblioblog” or who we call a “biblioblogger.”
Those choices need to meet a reasonable standard for what other “bibliobloggers” would agree constitutes their communal identity–more or less.
What happens in the “natural” process of blogging is that we often get pigeon-holed into our own mini-blogging worlds. These larger events help us to see other things of interest and help to drive traffic between our blogs–networking.
My interest is not to exclude (though that is a consequence), but to be intentional about including bloggers (particularly women) who have not as yet naturally flowed into our collection of mini-organic-blogging conversations.
Does that make sense?
Thanks, Loren. I appreciate it. Yeah, I think there is a big gray area in trying to balance out all the variables. And even with those considerations, I would prefer to give a blog the benefit of the doubt in trying to determine whether it “fits” into the category of a “biblioblog.”
The carnival and Top 50 and cool little logos are all well and good, but they do not create the community, nor do they define it’s parameters. I’ve never hosted a carnival (been mentioned once), don’t have a blog listing on Top 50, don’t use the logo, but I still consider myself a part of the biblioblogging community. I’m included because I include myself.
It is also important that the community in question is welcoming and allows me to include myself. That can’t be accomplished with rules or definitions or guidelines, but only by a spirit of honest openness and conversation.
In any case, how would you police your defined community? And how would you include someone if they don’t choose to include themselves? In other words, how can parameters that exclude lead to inclusion?