The Lives of Amish Women

Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4214-3870-2
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 158 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 566 g

Reihe: Young Center Books in Anabapti

Presenting a challenge to popular stereotypes, this book is an intimate exploration of the religiously defined roles of Amish women and how these roles have changed over time.

Continuity and change, tradition and dynamism shape the lives of Amish women and make their experiences both distinctive and diverse. On the one hand, a principled commitment to living Old Order lives, purposely out of step with the cultural mainstream, has provided Amish women with a good deal of constancy. Even in relatively more progressive Amish communities, women still engage in activities common to their counterparts in earlier times: gardening, homemaking, and childrearing. On the other hand, these persistent themes of domestic labor and the responsibilities of motherhood have been affected by profound social, economic, and technological changes up through the twenty-first century, shaping Amish women's lives in different ways and resulting in increasingly varied experiences.

In The Lives of Amish Women, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner draws on her thirty-five years of fieldwork in Amish communities and her correspondence with Amish women to consider how the religiously defined roles of Amish women have changed as Amish churches have evolved. Looking in particular at women's lives and activities at different ages and in different communities, Johnson-Weiner explores the relationship between changing patterns of social and economic interaction with mainstream society and women's family, community, and church roles. What does it mean, Johnson-Weiner asks, for an Amish woman to be humble when she is the owner of a business that serves people internationally? Is a childless Amish woman or a single Amish woman still a "Keeper at Home" in the same way as a woman raising a family? What does Gelassenheit—giving oneself up to God's will—mean in a subsistence-level agrarian Amish community, and is it at all comparable to what it means in a wealthy settlement where some members may be millionaires?

Illuminating the key role Amish women play in maintaining the spiritual and economic health of their church communities, this wide-ranging book touches on a number of topics, including early Anabaptist women and Amish pioneers to North America; stages of life; marriage and family; events that bring women together; women as breadwinners; women who do not meet the Amish norm (single women, childless women, widows); and even what books Amish women are reading. Aimed at anyone who is interested in the Amish experience, The Lives of Amish Women will help readers understand better the costs and benefits of being an Amish woman in a modern world and will challenge the stereotypes, myths, and imaginative fictions about Amish women that have shaped how they are viewed by mainstream society.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Johnson-Weiner, Karen M.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religiöse Fragen von Sexualität, Geschlecht und Beziehungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christliche Kirchen, Konfessionen, Denominationen Protestantismus, evangelische und protestantische Kirchen Konfessionen amerikanischen Ursprungs
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionssoziologie und -psychologie, Spiritualität, Mystik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. The Dynamic Worlds of Amish Women
Chapter 2. Becoming an Amish Woman
Chapter 3. Marriage and Ever After
Chapter 4. Events That Bring Women Together
Chapter 5. Women Out of the Ordinary
Chapter 6. Homemakers and Breadwinners
Chapter 7. Reading Amish Women
Chapter 8. Change, Diversity, and Amish Womanhood
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Johnson-Weiner, Karen M.
Karen M. Johnson-Weiner is an associate professor of linguistic anthropology and the chair of the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Potsdam.

Karen M. Johnson-Weiner is a Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of anthropology at SUNY Potsdam. She is the author of Train Up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools and New York Amish: Life in the Plain Communities of the Empire State and a coauthor of The Amish.