Hutterites In North America (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)

This case study in cultural anthropology focuses on the day-to-day living patterns of the Hutterites, a German-dialect-speaking Christian sect whose members live communally in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada. The authors describe the Hutterite belief system and how it minimizes aggression and dissension, and protects the members against the outside world. Features: * Hutterites' core social and personal values - nonaggression, selflessness and humility - are a challenge to the central North American mainstream values of achivevement, exploitation and aggression. * Hutterite education of their young, a primary concern of all Hutterite colonies, is an example of how successful education maintains community. * The Hutterites have lived with prejudice since their beginnings four and one half centuries ago, and young Hutterite men who refused military service in North America were persecuted inhumanely as recently as World War I. * John Hostetler, of Old Order Amish parents and an internationally known expert on communal societies in the United States and Canada, was readily accepted by the closeknit Hutterite community, and Gertrude Huntington was accepted by the colony with which she and her family lived as they conformed to Hutterite norms.