I’m broadly interested in religions and ethnic groups with coordinated dress practices. If members of such minority groups obligate themselves to dress in a coordinated manner, then they will think of themselves as special, as exceptional. From that simple outlook, a whole complex of social processes unfold: cultural schematics, health profiles and practices, material culture, demographic patterns, language/phraseology, nested identity layers, social action calculations, economic structures, symbols, power distributions, institution types, just about anything.

None of this can be reduced to “they” just want to be different from “us”, nor are “their” attributes totally reducible to “their” values. Indeed, the entire idea of being exceptional means you are also a product of what you’re different from. Being exceptional, then, is partly group integration but partly group destabilization because of the contradiction of being both “different” and “same.” Perfection is never reached because the group cannot be fully separate and independent, nor is it actually sought. Thus, being an exceptional people is forever a tenuous process, always requiring re-evaluation. These coordinated dressing groups, then, are not static but volatile, changing. They manage more conflict than may meet the eye.