Valued Amish Possessions: Expanding Material Culture and Consumption

Old Order Amish1 life is often romanticized in the contemporary American imagination. Despite the severe persecution that drove the Amish from their European homeland and their subjection to ridicule and hate crimes throughout much of the twentieth century, today they generally enjoy a hallowed status. While they are sometimes the source of humor in the popular media, appearing in credit card commercials, Hollywood comedies, nationally syndicated cartoons, and even reality television, behind this light-hearted mocking often exists a quiet respect for their stubborn refusal to be swept up with mainstream consumer culture. Moreover, the criticisms levied against the Amish for such infamous transgressions as the 1998 arrests of two Lancaster Amish youth for dealing cocaine, serve to advance the mythologizing trope when cast, as it was by the national media, that "even the Amish were unable to maintain their innocence" (Weaver-Zercher 193). Indeed, the purity and wholesomeness of the Amish reputation are seen in the association of its name with a variety of high-quality food products (e.g., chicken, honey, bacon, melons, pies, and cheese) featured in fine restaurants and specialty food stores across the nation. Amish furniture is a multimillion-dollar business with many retailers, even "super-stores," carrying their goods exclusively and touting the quality of "old-world craftsmanship" in their showrooms and on their Web sites. Their popularity is also evidenced by the multimillion-dollar tourist industries that have blossomed in the three largest Amish communities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. While mere curiosity is at play, so too is the romantic notion of witnessing a simpler, more pristine life as it might have been for our forefathers: It wraps around your mind like a cozy blanket. A cool Fall day, yellow and purple leaves flying, puffywhites floating by, a horse-drawn buggy just ahead, horse tail flickering in the northwest breeze. A white house, immaculate, with a gold and orange backdrop of country flickering in the slanted sun. Tow-headed kids walking, carrying baskets of flowers. Some call it "small town America." Mapmakers call it "Northern Indiana." Folks that live around here call it "Amish Country." (Amish Country 4) The hundreds of thousands of visitors to "Amish country" each year might, however, get slight glimpses of incongruity from the photos and descriptions in their travel guides and vacation brochures. One might witness an Amish mother holding her child's plastic, batteryoperated Disney toy while shopping for frozen dinners at a local Wal-Mart; or an Amish man purchasing the latest cordless tool set featured at a home improvement center; or a horse and buggy hitched to a post outside a McDonald's restaurant as an Amish family dines inside on Big Macs and Happy Meals. These paradoxical images are increasingly common among the 180,000 Old Order Amish adults and children living in twenty-eight American states and in Ontario, Canada (Luthy 18). Unifying the dispersed population, Amish religiosity conceptualizes two distinct and competing human spheres: "those who are obedient and those who are alienated from God"-the latter of a "blind, perverted world" (Phil. 2:15) replete with "unfruitful works of darkness" (Hosteller 22). Their "evil"-worldliness-is defined as "(1) seeking comforts (convenience), (2) the love of material things, and (3) self-enhancing activity" (22). How then, if "consumptive spending is carefully guarded by meaningful rules against luxuries and conveniences" (22), do we account for the seemingly contradictory presence of such things as cigarettes, cologne, battery-powered flashlights, hired automobiles, electric-powered washing machines, remote-controlled lanterns, and Amish families dining in restaurants? The Amish Academic Literature and the Gaps Addressed by this Study Steeped in the discourse of social and cultural change, the Amish academic literature has focused on the "peculiarities," "puzzles," "riddles," "compromises," "stresses," "struggles," and "warfare" separating traditionalism and modernity. …