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This chapter comments upon an influential article written by Israel M. Ta-Shma. In the article, the unique significance and force that ‘custom’ (minhag) possessed in Ashkenaz is emphasized. It is holly unlike the subsidiary role that minhag played in other west European Jewish cultures of the Middle Ages. In Early Ashkenaz (c. 950–1096) religious life was conducted according to custom and custom alone. When a conflict was detected between the prescriptions of the Talmud and popular practice, the latter prevailed — not simply by force of habit, but out of the deep conviction that the law embodied in the traditional conduct of the people should override any formal, written dictate. In the course of the twelfth century, the law inscribed in the Talmud came to predominate in Ashkenaz, but only after a bitter struggle with custom. Ta-Shma attributes this distinctive view of the power of established practice to the Palestinian origins of the Ashkenazic community. The Palestinian Talmud (Yerushalmi), in sharp contrast to the Babylonian (Bavli), was of the opinion that custom overruled the dictates of prescriptive law — minhag mevattel halakhah.

This chapter turns from Wesley’s theology to the popular practice of the band meeting from 1738 through the mid-1760s. The chapter considers the extent to which Wesley’s conception of the bands was practiced in Methodism during this period. The chapter is divided into two chronological periods: the period prior to the advent of the class meeting (1738-1742) and the first two decades after class meetings became a mandatory weekly meeting for Methodists (1743-ca. 1765). These two periods are similarly organized. First, the organization and conduct of band meetings is described. Then, the extent to which Methodists searched for assurance and pursued holiness together in bands is considered, as well as the degree to which they reinforced the necessity of a disciplined practice of the means of grace. It is generally argued that Wesley’s conception of the band meeting was largely practiced at the popular level of early Methodism.

This chapter examines the popular Methodist experience of band meetings from the late eighteen and early nineteenth centuries. The popular practice of the bands from the 1760s to the 1780s and from the 1780s through the beginning of the nineteenth century is detailed. Each section discusses the organization and conduct of the band meeting, the extent to which Methodists searched for assurance and holiness in bands, and the degree to which bands reinforced the necessity of a disciplined practice of the means of grace. This chapter also considers the popular primary source material related to the select society, or select bands (groups focused on the pursuit of entire sanctification or Christian perfection). The chapter concludes by arguing that the shift from band meetings to prayer meetings in the nineteenth century evidences a departure from Wesley’s emphasis on “social holiness” involving intimate small group accountability toward larger scale revivalism.

The conclusion of the book argues that state conventions of issuing identification documents and administering poor subjects by absorbing popular knowledge practices did not manifest themselves abruptly or evenly. The very terms and connotations of people demanding certain genres, making and re-making identification documents cannot be read independently of the historical and socio-spatial contexts in which relations between the state and its subjects unfolded. Where the Indian state has drawn out its welfare capacities through popular mobilizations by collectives such as workers’ unions, refugee associations, and slum residents, a unique reliance on a number-based ecosystem threatens to undo the reciprocities and dynamics of governing the poor. We may then be in clamorous need of paper-based infrastructures and potentialities of engendering evidentiary knowledge of the welfare subject where they allow for such innovations.