Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies: Volume 5, Issue 1 (Spring 2017)

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Issue DOI: https://doi.org/10.18061/1811/81041


Past Reflections and Future Directions in Amish Studies
Special Volume, Issue 1 of 2


Front Matter
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Section 1: Critical Reflections in Amish Studies

Editor’s Introduction—
Seventy-Five Years of Amish Studies, 1942 to 2017: A Critical Review of Scholarship Trends (with an Extensive Bibliography)
Anderson, Cory pp. 1-65
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Paradigmatic Paradigm Problems: Theory Issues in Amish Studies
Reschly, Steven pp. 66-81
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The Functionalist Problem in Kraybill's Riddle of Amish Culture
Billig, Michael S.; Zook, Elam pp. 82-95
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Section 2: Advances in Methods and Data

Reviving the Demographic Study of the Amish
Colyer, Corey; Anderson, Cory; Stein, Rachel; Donnermeyer, Joseph F.; Wasao, Samson pp. 96-119
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More Than Forty Amish Affiliations? Charting the Fault Lines
Petrovich, Christopher pp. 120-142
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Book Review

Horse-and-Buggy Genius: Listening to Mennonites Contest the Modern World By Royden Loewen
Zimmerman, Janelle pp. 143-146
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    Front Matter (Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2017)
    (Ohio State University. Libraries, 2017)
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    Seventy-Five Years of Amish Studies, 1942 to 2017: A Critical Review of Scholarship Trends (with an Extensive Bibliography)
    (Ohio State University. Libraries, 2017) Anderson, Cory
    After 75 years, Amish studies has received no field reviews, an oversight I rectify using several citation analysis techniques. I offer criteria for defining Amish research, which results in 983 references. Amish studies has a very highly centralized core; the top one percent of cited references account for 20% of every citation in Amish studies, with Hostetler, Kraybill, Nolt, and Huntington dominating the top list. Few consolidated subareas exist, exceptions being language and health/population research. Analyzing Amish studies chronologically, the field early on accepted the definitive-sympathetic-authoritative-comprehensive-insider research approach, which legitimated "The Throne" (so-called) in Amish studies, i.e., a central scholar, a few close to him, and the irrelevant hinterlands. The seat was first occupied by Hostetler, then Kraybill. The absence of driving research questions, theory developments, and debates creates place for The Throne, whom scholars often cite to legitimize a given study emerging from an otherwise fragmented field, this field failing to provide scholars self-legitimization. Other troubles with The Throne model are also presented. My call to Amish studies is (1) to develop honed research questions that address specific sub-areas and to consider how any given reference fits into the literature, and (2) to distance our empirical work from fence-straddling popular/scholarly models, e.g. rejecting "the Amish" as a brand name, approaching the Amish as purely scholars and not partially tourists, and foregoing a protective- or reformist-mentality toward the Amish.
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    Paradigmatic Paradigm Problems: Theory Issues in Amish Studies
    (Ohio State University. Libraries, 2017) Reschly, Steven
    Scholars of Amish history and culture, and scholars of Anabaptist and Anabaptist-descent groups more generally, have not engaged consistently or productively with mainstream theoretical developments in social and cultural studies. The phrase used most often in Amish Studies, "negotiating with modernity," has limited usefulness because of its abstractions and time restrictions. A viable alternative rises from the research and writings of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who formulated Habitus and Field as terms to theorize about the interaction of internal and external in human experience, perhaps the oldest and thorniest issue in the social sciences. Reformulated for more general use as "structuring intuition" and "structured intuition" can help, for example, historicize Amish Studies and, by extension, research on other Anabaptist groups. An example of how this might operate is provided by the history of Anabaptist and Amish agriculture from the early modern European "agricultural revolution" to the early twenty-first century. Habitus and Field enable one to describe and explain the consistencies of Amish habits of mind concerning agriculture, or their "structuring intuition," as those habits confront and adjust to shifting economic, political, social, and cultural environments, or field as "structured intuition." Brief examples from eighteenth-century France, nineteenth-century Iowa, twentieth-century Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and early twenty-first century Iowa must suffice to outline what this portable adaptation of Bourdieu might produce.
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    The Functionalist Problem in Kraybill's Riddle of Amish Culture
    (Ohio State University. Libraries, 2017) Billig, Michael S.; Zook, Elam
    Much of contemporary Amish scholarship manifests an implicit functionalist paradigm that harkens back to mid-20th-century social science. This perspective tends toward optimistic, even "Panglossian," explanation of traits, in which everything that the Amish do or believe has a use, purpose, or reason; i.e., a function. The vagaries of history and the ebb and flow of power may be acknowledged, but they are relegated to minor explanatory factors. This essay provides a close reading of Donald Kraybill's popular The Riddle of Amish Culture. It demonstrates the functionalist premises behind many of the explanations offered in Riddle, despite the fact that the author provides sufficient information for the reader to come to different conclusions about how aspects of Amish life came to be what they are. That the Amish themselves read and respect Kraybill's work leads to a paradoxical situation in which Kraybill's narratives are taken to be true explanations, which then become another doctrine that must not be debated or self-corrected.
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    Reviving the Demographic Study of the Amish
    (Ohio State University. Libraries, 2017) Colyer, Corey; Anderson, Cory; Stein, Rachel; Donnermeyer, Joseph F.; Wasao, Samson
    The Amish exhibit distinctive demographic patterns, notably high fertility. While scholars have studied Amish population dynamics for more than a half century, recent research in this area is limited. We believe the time is ripe to reverse this trend. This article reviews data collection methods, points to a variety of accessible sources of new data, presents some preliminary results from the analysis of one such source (the McKune dataset for Holmes County, Ohio), introduces the research agenda and work of the newly formed Amish Population Research Group, and reviews past demographic findings to situate our agenda. An invitation is extended to demographers, social scientists, health researchers, and others to enter into collaborations with APRG.
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    More Than Forty Amish Affiliations? Charting the Fault Lines
    (Ohio State University. Libraries, 2017) Petrovich, Christopher
    The Amish are notoriously difficult to chart in terms of affiliations. However, defining affiliations is important to researchers: as a suitable measurement of conservatism, as a useful context for making sense of a particular district or settlement, for tracing socio-religious change over time, and for depicting both the unity and diversity that characterize contemporary Amish socio-ecclesiastical life. Until recently, scholars followed John Hostetler's definition of an affiliation as a group of church districts that fellowship together and share a common Ordnung. But in The Amish, Donald Kraybill, Karen Johnson-Weiner, and Steven Nolt offer an entirely new definition of an affiliation as a cluster of two or more districts with at least twenty years of shared history. They conclude that there are at least 40 Amish affiliations. I argue against this haphazard fragmentation, identifying six major affiliations and a handful of outliers. I then apply my traditional-modified model to several scenarios to demonstrate the model's utility.
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    Horse-and-Buggy Genius: Listening to Mennonites Contest the Modern World By Royden Loewen
    (Ohio State University. Libraries, 2017) Zimmerman, Janelle