Holding the line
Subtitle: the telephone in Old Order Mennonite and Amish life
By: Diane Zimmerman Umble.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Baltimore, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 192
Subjects: Telephone -- Religious aspects -- Old Order Mennonites.; Telephone -- Religious aspects -- Amish.; Telephone -- Social aspects -- Pennsylvania -- Lancaster County.; Amish -- Pennsylvania -- Lancaster County -- Customs and practices.; Old Order Mennonites -- Pennsylvania -- Lancaster County -- Customs and practices.; Lancaster County (Pa.) -- Church history -- 20th century.; Lancaster County (Pa.) -- Religious life and customs.
Description: 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 how technology affects community identity and the maintenance of cultural values through the regulation of the means of communication.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p.[175]-184) and index.