The Sociology of Harry Potter: 22 Enchanting Essays on the Wizarding World

by Unknown

  More generous readings have been proposed by Henry Jenkins (2006: 171), who argues that the Potter saga asserts “children’s rights over institutional constraints,” which, coupled with the popularity of the texts among reluctant readers, encourages a critical reflection on limitations and constraints imposed on young people’s reading preferences and artistic expression. In the same vein Drew Chappell (2007: 281) appreciates Rowling’s imagining “culture in which… child agency is possible, where young people become builders of context, awakening to the network of relationships and institutions that frame their lives.” In this sense, Harry and his friends’ attempts at questioning and resisting injustice and oppression through the understanding of and negotiating with institutions and adults shaping their lives correspond to children’s actual experiences in a postmodern world offering “multiple opportunities and layered identity constructions” (Chappell 2007: 292). In an equally positive interpretation of Hogwarts, Roni Natov (2002: 133) notes that although Hogwarts epitomizes the deficiencies in the social organization of both the Magical and the Muggle world, “it is also a wondrous and humorous world” in itself and through the unruly playfulness of its students.

  “If Harry and his friends can come together with love in their hearts, a sense of playfulness and a vision for a better world . . . why can’t his fans?” - Slack[xxiii]

  The following analysis of three pieces of fan fiction by young authors is to illustrate the intuitive workings of sociological imagination of young readers of the series in their thinking about systems of governance and social constructions of race. As will be shown, the selected fics testify to the young readers’ constructive approach to the series that goes beyond sheer consumption of the texts towards a critical and creative reworking of the given contexts, including the implementation of alternative ideas of governance and social justice. This activity in turn may be seen as a sign of young people’s ability to engage in actual political and social projects.

  Envisaging New Politics

  In “A Bad Week at Wizengamot,” the young poster by the name DisobedienceWriter speculates what would happen if Harry was found guilty of inappropriate usage of magic against dementors and decided to leave Britain for good. Whereas the fic is focused on Harry’s exploits abroad, especially in France, where he sets up his own winery and produces poisonous wine that kills Voldemort, the author also includes complex and intriguing ideas about the foundations and functioning of the British Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts. Suffice it to mention Harry’s exposure of Fudge’s incompetence, proneness to bribes, and the resulting complicity in allowing Voldemort and Death Eaters to take control over the magical world. Furthermore, the author mentions Fudge’s policies and propaganda aimed at diverting public attention from the threat posed by Voldemort. The crisis also affects Hogwarts, which is presented as an old-fashioned institution whose standards lag behind those of foreign schools. As the French Ambassador bitingly comments in a conversation with Fudge:

  [S]urely you don’t think your provincial little school is the only one in the world… How many potions masters has England produced in the last decade? Three. How many has Peru created? Forty-eight. And the Peruvian test is much more challenging than the English version. Really, Minister, you’re not very well up to date on educational matters and methods, I think. I’ve heard about your plan to place Dolores at Hogwarts. In real schools, teachers are required to demonstrate their qualifications in the subjects they teach. Political connections are irrelevant.

  The overall chaos in the British magical world is averted by European Magical Union emissaries, who arrest Death Eaters and nominate Sirius Black as Interim Minister for four and a half months. The author concludes the political commentary by presenting Black as “shaking things up a bit” and effecting such far-reaching changes as sinking the dementors into the ocean, revoking most laws passed by passed by the Wizengamot, “particularly anything that had to do with pureblood grandfathering,” and making the wizard high court “an elected body, rather than a hereditary one.”

  In “Padfoot’s Proclamations,” the subsequent chapter on the changes in the wizarding world following the defeat of Voldemort, DisobedienceWriter elaborates on specific reforms introduced by Sirius in a series of Ministerial Proclamations. The most important goal of Sirius’s decisions, however humorous, witty and prankish he seems, is to abolish traditional administrative, class, and social hierarchies and ensure that the value of every individual to the community and individual rights will be respected within the democratic system of consensual decisions. With this goal in mind, Sirius introduces laws enabling all sentient magical creatures to vote, thereby restructuring the Wizengamot to include “merfolk, centaurs, house-elves, goblins, werewolves, vampires, Crumple-Horned Snorkacks…” with the provision that “[a] minimum of ten percent of the vacant seats are reserved for non-human creatures.” Moreover, the election reforms introduced by the wizard also result in the liberation of house-elves, who create “a new company to do spot cleaning and cooking work on a paid basis for a large number of families” and are very happy about the newly gained independence. As DisobedienceWriter explains, the extended suffrage invalidates “any master-servant bond.” Sirius also attempts to improve relationships with Muggles by enabling Muggle-born children “or magical children from squib lines” to “learn of their heritage, including how to access further resources in Diagon Alley” and to attend a school of magic. Finally, Sirius extends the Muggle Relations division “as the Ministry began to work more and better with the larger world outside it.”

  Dealing with problems at Hogwarts, Sirius makes sure that its Board of Governors will now be “elective,” which in turn will eliminate favoritism:

  Board members will serve two-year terms, be eligible for reelection, and will step down from the board during the period when their own children or wards attend Hogwarts or when they are appointed to teach or administer at the school.

  Of particular interest is also the author’s idea of an “educational revolution” aiming at raising the standards of education at Hogwarts, for example by careful assessment of teachers’ competence and the supervision of the curriculum and classes, as well as by providing graduates with the opportunity to either enter apprenticeships or continue their schooling at Balliol College, Oxford. Equally significant is the transformation of Hogwarts’ inner organization into a more democratic one:

  the houses were now being randomized and the Sorting Hat was brought out a couple of times per year to chat with the students and also studied in the new seventh year course on Enchanting;…the prefects and Head students were being abolished as obsolete;… there were age-group common rooms throughout the castle.

  The ideal outcome of reading socially and politically critical fiction is the awakening of readers in the hope that they will extrapolate from the world of the text to the actual problems in the real world and actively face them. As the above example indicates, fan fiction may be a transitory stage of practical thinking that will lead from the reflection on the institutions and laws of the wizarding world to the ability to comprehend social and political mechanisms of the real world. Far from the abstract discussions of rights or liberty, DisobedienceWriter has engaged in an autonomous rediscovery of the genuine meaning of such ideas as justice, freedom or solidarity. Moreover, complex and detailed as the description of Sirius’s reforms is, the text is far from boring as Sirius is skillfully depicted as having both a humorous and thoughtful approach to the rectification of the social and political problems of the magical world. Significantly, the chapter concludes with Sirius reflecting that “change was good! Change was fun. That was the last message Sirius wanted to leave behind,” which may be seen as highlighting the fact that even if political structures organizing individual and social life are concepts that people create and develop over the ages, they can be transformed both through collective intellectual labor and as redefined as personal struggles, in the context of moral commitment, pluralism, and n
on-violence, so rare in contemporary political structures and institutions.

  New World Order in the Wizarding World

  The theme of race inequality is addressed in fics by Elenillor and Wyrmskyld. In “Remus defined,” the former presents the Ministry’s humiliating procedures of branding animagi with numbers, which, as is shown on the example of the young Remus, does indeed make them feel acutely that they have lost their humanity and irrevocably turned into animals.[xxiv] The young Sirius, in love with Remus, empathizes with him, speculates about the possibility of changing ministerial regulations, and even wishes to get a number, himself which, ironically happens when he is sentenced to Azkaban.

  In “Registration,” Wyrmskyld focuses on the obligatory annual check-up for animagi at the Ministry. A frightened young male wererabbit meets the elderly Lupin, who has become President of the Werewolf Coalition. Although the story is not developed beyond this brief meeting, the formation of the Coalition suggests the emergence of an organized oppositional movement questioning the ministerial segregationist policies. Admittedly, neither of the stories contains the all-pervasive utopian optimism of DisobedienceWriter’s fics, but they nevertheless point out the possibility of the solidarity of those disempowered by institutionalized racial intolerance in their rejection of subjugation.

  The corresponding theme of the rebellion against the institutionalized intolerance at Hogwarts also appears in “Prejudice,” a Second Generation Fic by BookNerd7. Defying her father’s exhortations on the day she left for her first year at Hogwarts, and not caring about other students’ reactions, Rose Weasley, a Ravenclaw, repeatedly eats her breakfast by the Slytherin table. Also Albus, Rose’s cousin and a Slytherin, sits at the Ravenclaw table during dinners. As Scorpius Malfoy reflects on Rose’s rebellious behavior:

  [She] had started something. No matter how much better House Unity had been since the Battle of Hogwarts, students had never dared to sit at another table for more than a couple of minutes, not even the offspring of the Golden Trio.

  Rose’s initiative is so successful that when the children are in their seventh year, as Scorpius remarks, it became “pretty useless to even have the house tables anymore. He was sitting at the Gryffindor table next to Albus, and talking to Hugo Weasley from Hufflepuff about Quidditch.” Rose’s radical stance testifies to the author’s belief that young people perfectly realize the crucial role they play in improving the world. Significantly, as Rose also falls in love with Scorpius, she makes other students understand that he cannot be blamed for his father’s misdeeds, which in turn indicates the author’s conviction that adolescents respond to challenges of current crises with creative and clear-headed decisions that enable them to deal with problems created by the adult generation.[xxv]

  Conclusion

  “We do not need magic to transform the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have power to imagine better.” - Rowling, 2008

  The sample fan fiction texts analyzed above testify to their young authors’ ability to find and express their own stances on the wizarding world’s status quo. These individual visions of the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts reflect their critical appraisals of real life social and political processes, even if their radicalism and progressiveness is at time utopian. Positioned in a broader context, these fan fictions belong to the Harry Potter fandom, within which its participants, young and old, share common interests and build political alliances. Most importantly, Harry Potter fandom has also generated a space “where children teach one another and where, if they would open their eyes, adults could learn a great deal” (Jenkins 2006: 205).

  The Internet has become a new means of building and developing communities and solidarity; therefore it is quite likely that, as Marina Umaschi Bers (2008: 152) remarks, “youth who are more active on-line will also grow into more engaged citizens.” These young citizens will soon become members of cyberdemocracy, which as Pierre Lévy (2005) argues, will bring both unprecedented creative freedom that may result in the shaping of a new reality, and the obligation to critically assess the possibilities before any concrete decisions may be taken. This responsibility necessitates the operation of what Hector Raul Solis-Gadea (2005: 117) calls the sociological imagination of the New Millennium: a multi-perspective and ever-scrutinizing understanding of the current reality, as well as “a creative form on inquiry more than a source of definite answers” and “corpus of knowledge.” The virtual communities of Harry Potter fandom, focused on collective creation linking one’s own fate and with the future of others, as well as on discussion and dissemination of alternative social visions, seem to herald a possibility of the emergence of a new world, freer of prejudice, conflicts and differences.

  References

  Bers, Marina Umaschi. 2008. “Civic Identities, Online Technologies: From Designing Civic Curriculum to Supporting Civic Experiences.” Pp. 139-160 in Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. Edited by W. Lance Bennett. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur. Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

  Bennet, Lance. W, ed. 2008. “Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age.” Pp. 1-25 in Civic Life Online Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur. Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

  Bond, Ernest, and Nancy Michelson. 2003. “Writing Harry’s World: Children Coauthoring Hogwarts.” Pp. 109-124 in Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives. Edited by E. E. Heilman. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

  BookNerd7. 2011. “Prejudice.” 2011. Retrieved February 20, 2011

  (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6615032/1/Prejudice).

  Chappell, Drew. 2008. “Sneaking Out After Dark: Resistance, Agency, and the Postmodern Child in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter Series.” Children’s Literature in Education. 39: 281–293.

  Derecho, Abigail. 2006. “A Definition, a History, and Several Theories of Fan Fiction.” Pp. 61-78 in Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of Internet: New Essays. Edited by K. Hellekson and K. Busse. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland.

  DisobedienceWriter. 2007. “A Bad Week at Wizengamot” (2007). Retrieved February 20, 2011

  (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3639659/1/A_Bad_Week_at_the_Wizengamot).

  Downes, Daragh. 2010. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollowness: A Narratological and ideological Critique of J.K. Rowling’s Magical System.” International Research in Children’s Literature. 3.2: 162-173.

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