Shipshewana : an Indiana Amish community / Dorothy O. Pratt.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Pratt, Dorothy O., 1949-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Amish--Indiana--Shipshewana--History.
• Amish--Indiana--Shipshewana--Social conditions.
• Amish--Indiana--LaGrange County--History.
• Amish--Indiana--LaGrange County--Social conditions.
• Amish.
• Social conditions.
• History.
• Shipshewana (Ind.)--History.
• LaGrange County (Ind.)--History.
• Indiana--LaGrange County.
• Indiana--Shipshewana.

Physical Description:

ix, 209 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Quarry Books, 2004.

Summary:

• This book is a cultural history of one Indiana Amish community and how it has successfully resisted assimilation into the mass culture of America today. Founded in 1841, Shipshewana benefited from LaGrange County's relative isolation. As Dorothy O. Pratt shows, this isolation was vital to the community's success. Amish culture goes hand in hand with the Amish worldview, and both have persisted relatively unchanged since the community began. The Amish view the world around them through the prism of a belief in collective salvation that is based on purity, separation, and perseverance. They approach change by asking, would anything new add or detract from the community's long-term purpose? Seen through this prism, most innovation has been found wanting.
• In Indiana, the Amish were able to develop a stable farming economy and a social structure based on their own terms. During the years of crisis, 1917-1945, the community worked out ways to protect its boundaries that would not conflict with its basic religious principles. As conscientious objectors, the Amish bore the traumas of World War I, struggled against the Compulsory School Attendance Act, negotiated the labyrinth of New Deal bureaucracy, and labored in alternative service during World War II. As Pratt notes, ongoing conflict with federal and state regulations and governmental challenges to their conscientious objector status led to the creation of the Amish Steering Committee to promote the community's interests. In the 21st century, crisis and abuse from the outer world have tended only to confirm the desire of the Amish to remain a people apart, which lends a special poignancy to this engrossing tale of resistance to the modern world.

Contents:

• The LaGrange County settlement
• Creating cultural fencing
• The draft and the First World War
• The Indiana Councils of Defense and the Amish
• Modernization and the school issue
• The great Depression
• Civilian public service
• The home front in the Second World War
• Gaining control, 1946-1975.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0253345189

OCLC:

55044740