Amish Society
by John A. Hostetler
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Book Summary Information
Author: John A. HostetlerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-04-01
ISBN: 0801844428
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Book Reviews of Amish Society
Book Review: Understand The Amish As They Really Are
Summary: 5 Stars
Many readers probably bought this book after visiting an Amish community or seeing a Hollywood movie that triggered their curiosity for a culture and a way of life that seem to defy the passing of time. For most people, it will be the first and also perhaps the last ethnographic study that they read. They couldn't have fallen on a better piece of work. Not only will they learn a wealth of facts about the Amish, their history, their beliefs, and their social organization, but they will also come across a fine scholarly work that makes use of the distinctive methods of the social sciences in a thoroughly accessible way.
Anthropology, like its related disciplines - ethnology, sociology, cultural studies -, is often given a bad name because of its heavy use of abstruse jargon, its taste for intellectual virtuosity and its rejection of scholarly traditions built on the accumulation of facts in favor of mind games and ideological squabbles. Very often the author's ego takes center stage and the object of his or her enquiry is relegated to a mere pretext. Scholars are therefore not identified with the portion of the social world that they have studied and the realities of life that they have shed light on, but with the schools of thought or -isms that compete against each other for intellectual supremacy. As these theoretical constructs are mere passing fads, the work of these scholars soon fall into oblivion. Little remains of the contribution they have made to the knowledge and understanding of a subject.
Hostetler's Amish Society is a testimony that an anthropological monograph can be relevant for the public at large and pass the test of time - the first edition was published in 1963, and the author has fully revised his text several times before coming up with this last edition. The result is a fine study that covers every aspects of the Amish's social life. It starts with the origin of these Anabaptist communities in the region stretching from the Bern canton to the Palatinate, lists their articles of faith that find their origins in the Schleitheim Articles and the Dodrecht Confession, maps their settlement across the plains of the New World in successive waves of emigration, describes the great agricultural skills of these peasants who transformed the soils they toiled into the most productive lands in the world, goes through every stage of the Amish family life cycle, details their worldviews and symbolic interactions, explains their relations with the "modern world" and the way they cope with change, and much more.
Readers might be surprised to learn that the groups of Amish and related "Plain People" (Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites, Brethren) are actually quite diverse in terms of their acceptance and use of technology and in their relationships with the outside world. What they have in common is a sense of fellowship drawn from a literal interpretation of the Scriptures. One scripture often quoted in Amish worship services is Romans 12:2: "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God."
On a more personal note, I was interested to discover that the region where my father was born and that I visited often as a child, the Montbelliard county in the eastern part of France, once was a hotbed of Anabaptism and still hosts one of the most important Mennonite community in Western Europe.
Summary of Amish Society
Highly acclaimed in previous editions, this classic work by John Hostetler has been expanded and updated to reflect current research on Amish history and culture as well as the new concerns of Amish communities throughout North America.
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