As with feminist punk, vocal styles of the world, the organology of the world’s instrumentarium, and indeed any other human activity, the taxonomies made by ordinary people are evident from their fine discriminations of nuance between pop genres that may seem arcane to the outsider—like acid house, drum and bass, grunge, indie, metal, Northern soul (“Naa, I’m not into the Manchester sound, guys”), rap, hip-hop, and even trainers, FFS  (don’t ask me…).

And just the same goes for rural dwellers’ perceptions of ceremonial genres and ritual activity in any single county of China: shawm bands, geomancers and spirit mediums (distinctions within the latter partly gender-based), [1] amateur sects, temple priests, occupational household ritual specialists, inner and outer altars, civil and martial altars, Buddhist Daoists and Daoist Buddhists (I kid you not), [2] “northern” and “southern” ritual wind bands around Beijing, [3] opera troupes, singers, bards, beggars….

Taxonomy is not merely the preserve of the fusty academic; it’s part of what makes us all human.

Such perceptions can also arouse passionate and bitter disputes—never more so than between, and within, religions (if less so in China, notwithstanding imperial persecutions). But classification doesn’t have to equate with building walls. Whereas the brutish black-and-white (sic) xenophobia of a certain Tangerine fuckwit suggests that his sensibilities may not be so finely tuned, taxonomy can also reveal connections and build bridges.

[1] For just one region, see Adam Chau, Miraculous response, pp.54–8.
[2] See several reports in the Daojiao yishi congshu series, and Overmyer, Ethnography in China.
[3] See also my In search of the folk Daoists of north China, Appendix 1.