
Holding the Line
The Telephone in Old Order Mennonite and Amish Life
Diane Zimmerman Umble(Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Published on 28. March 2000
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-0-8018-6375-2 (ISBN)
Description
Among the Old Order Mennonite and Amish communities of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the coming of the telephone posed a serious challenge to the longstanding traditions of work, worship, silence, and visiting. In 1907, Mennonites crafted a compromise in order to avoid a church split and grudgingly allowed telephones for lay people while prohibiting telephone ownership among the clergy. By 1909, the Amish had banned the telephone completely from their homes. Since then, the vigorous and sometimes painful debates about the meaning of the telephone reveal intense concerns about the maintenance of boundaries between the community and the outside world and the processes Old Order communities use to confront and mediate change. In Holding the Line, Diane Zimmerman Umble offers a historical and ethnographic study of how the Old Order Mennonites and Amish responded to and accommodated the telephone from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. For Old Order communities, Umble writes, appropriate use of the telephone marks the edges of appropriate association -- who can be connected to whom, in what context, and under what circumstances.
Umble's analysis of the social meaning of the telephone explores the effect of technology on community identity and the maintenance of cultural values through the regulation of the means of communication.
Umble's analysis of the social meaning of the telephone explores the effect of technology on community identity and the maintenance of cultural values through the regulation of the means of communication.
Reviews / Votes
Umble offers a historic perspective on how members of the close-knit communities and their leaders responded to the challenges posed by the intrusion of the telephone into long-standing traditions of work, silence, and visiting in the early 1900s... A book that is useful in fostering understanding of the origins, philosophy, and lifestyle of the Plain People and enjoyable for its often humorous account of what life was like in America before the telephone reached out and touched everyone. Harrisburg PatriotMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
20 s/w Abbildungen
20 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
365 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-6375-2 (9780801863752)
DOI
10.56021/9780801853128
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
09/1996
Johns Hopkins University Press
€56.59
Article not available for order
Person
Diane Zimmerman Umble is an associate professor of communication and theater at Millersville University.
Author
Acting Director of the Center for Academic Excellence andMillersville University