KRAYBILL

How the Amish are represented or portrayed is a passion of mine, especially if I think the effect of the portrayal is harmful. One of the ways in which a portrayal can be harmful, is when it appears to be a neutral perspective, when in fact it's biased and its actual function is that of advocacy. Donald Kraybills' work on the Amish is particularly egregious.

Here's Kraybill in "The Riddle Of Amish Culture"

As a symbol of Amish culture, the horse articulates the
meaning of several key values: tradition, time, limits, nature, and sacrifice.
As a sacred link with history, the horse provides hard evidence that the Amish
have not completely succumbed to progress. It heralds the triumph of tradition
and signals faithful continuity with the past. A counter-symbol to the
worldliness embodied in cars, the horse is tangible proof that the Amish have
not sold out to the glamour and glitter of a high-tech society. A striking
symbol of nonconformity, the horse separates the Amish from the modern world and
anchors them in the past. Over the years, the church has forbidden fancy
harnesses and decorative tack in hopes of keeping the horse undefiled. To be
content with horse-drawn travel is a sign of commitment to tradition, faith, and
the church. In this way, the horse becomes a sacred symbol.

And a page later.

As a front-stage symbol, the horse projects a
conservative public image that conveniently camouflages a multitude of
differences in income, lifestyles, and hobbies on the backstage of Amish life.
The Amish businessman who travels in a hired truck all week supervising a
multimillion-dollar business bends to tradition by driving his horse to Sunday
services. Progressive Amish who read Newsweek, limit the size of their families,
and landscape their homes can nod with affinity to their more conservative
neighbors as their horses pass each other on country roads. The horse offers
compelling proof that the Amish are still Amish while permitting a host of
changes in other areas of Amish life.

end quote

As you can see Kraybill is effusive over the horses' place in Amish life. Being an outsider to Amish culture, and a social scientist, Kraybill should be able to see the decision by Amish leaders, to use horses, as having consequences other than perfect bliss. I think Kraybill has become a propagandist for the Amish church leadership. His reward is continued access, which in turn has made him the ultimate authority on the Amish. Go figure.


REALITY
Adhering to their horse and buggy ways has exacerbated the issue of class and economic inequality exponentially for the Amish. Consider the Amish Business man Kraybill refers to. While he's commuting around looking at jobs, he'll execute a host of none business related tasks like, picking up groceries (for the un-expected dinner guests), prescriptions at the pharmacy, Pedia-lite and Tylenol for the baby with a fever, dropping off one or two of the adolescent kids at the dentists office. The list goes on and on. Now let's compare that to one of his Amish workers who is picked up at 5:45 am. and returned home at 6:15 pm. (that's on a good day, sometimes it's later) Since he's traveling with a group of other workers, and he's not the boss, his autonomy to make those extracurricular stops, is very limited.
So, let's drop in at the home of our hypothetical Amish worker, and see what a typical day might be like for his wife. They have three children and another one on the way. The baby and mother are sick with the common cold. She is scheduled for a prenatal care doctors visit today,
which she has been dreading for days, not because of the visit itself, but because her means of transportation is their newly acquired horse. She acquiesced when her husband wanted to get a younger, more spirited one, after their last one became to old. While growing up her older brothers always drove, so now her skill level and confidence are woefully inadequate.


I guess Kraybill didn't interview her for the book, but you can bet the adjectives Kraybill uses aren't the ones she would choose.

But, let's take this a couple steps further. What if our hypothetical husband loses his job? Or wants to change jobs for one with less demanding hours. The limitations placed on him because of his dependence on a horse for transportation will not bring Kraybills' adjectives to mind either.

HELP

Several years ago, I was shopping for books on the Amish, at "The People's Place" in Intercourse, Pa. I inquired about a book titled "After The Fire, The Destruction Of The Lancaster County Amish" which I had read some years prior. I was told by the clerk that it had been controversial and that they didn't carry it.

Does anyone know what she may have been referring to?

AUTHORS WANTED

My blog has a feature designed to enable me to list my favorite books or movies. I mention it to high-light how ubiquitous books and movies are to our common experience. The Amish aren't privy to the benefits of the artistic expression found in books and movies,at least, in the sense that their issues aren't explored and illuminated in the way the rest of western cultures' issues are.

Imagine what your life would be like, if all of your favorite books and movies, were never written or filmed. And then, try to imagine what western culture would have amounted to if all the great works of art, music and literature were never produced.

It's from this perspective that I look at Rep. Pitts' posturing over UPN's "Amish in the city" and the deal the Amish leaders made with the state, after Witness was filmed.

SAVING THE AMISH FROM HOLLYWOOD

After the movie Witness was made, Amish leaders got an agreement from the state government that it wouldn't promote movies that feature the Amish.


Because the State is suppressing the normal flow of artistic productions with its' agreement to not promote movies of the Amish, it is in effect enhancing the ability of the churches authoritarian leadership to control the message. This not only determines what non-amish people see and hear, but also their own followers.

In another time and place, this would be known as state sponsored religion.

PRO OR CON?

Readers of my posts maybe confused at times over whether I'm advocating for the Amish, or against them. Maybe I come across as disgruntled, or delighted to have gotten the hell out of there. Either position is actually okay with me because ultimately my goal for what I hope to achieve through my writing -bloging, is not to take sides, (after all I'm inherently a part of both cultures,) but to set up a couple fans whenever someone is blowing smoke.


Having been Amish, I'm aware of their flaws, but since I'm no longer Amish (at least not a member in good standing) I've no need to fix them. That dosen't mean as an American citizen I will patonizingly assume every thing the Amish do is just hunky-dory. There are points of contact between our cultures that need our clear headed attention. It isn't currently in vogue to think that the Amish need our values, but that dosen't mean we can suspend ours when we relate to them.


As an exAmish person I'm uniquely qualified to see the BS on our side that's directed at the Amish.

EXPLOITING THE AMISH

Our society as a whole is generally oblivious to the exploitation that occurs of the Amish by the non-Amish. Sometimes the exploitation occurs while the perpetrators are protesting the "exploitation" of the Amish.


Example


From an earlier post.


The local GOP is to be commended for trying to increase voter participation, but it wasn't so long ago that Congressman Joe Pitts was in a snit about UPN's "Amish in the City," proclaiming it an assault on my people's sanctity of life. If Pitts and local campaign officials weren't so anxious to make political hay, or really knew their constituents, they would understand that, when the Amish align themselves with the government, they are violating one of their core principles in a far more detrimental way than a couple of marginalized teenagers on a reality show ever will.



The degrees of idiocy revealed in Rep. Pitts' efforts to protect the Amish from reality tv may only be apparent from an insiders perspective. So bear with me.



A prominent element of Amish faith is the scriptural admonition to be separate and apart from the world. In Amish life this isn't some vague idea, but is practiced in prescribed and established behaviors. The idea that a religious people, whose sermons are filled with praise for their Martyrs and the revelation that it was the government that persecuted them, would need Rep. Pitts to help resist the lure of reality tv, is an epic farce.



But there is an aspect of what happened between Rep. Pitts and the Amish that should concern us all. The Amish are very clear where their boundaries are and once one of their own crosses that line they are more than willing to establish that the transgressor is on his or her own. The problem is, there are, at any point in time numerous individuals who see themselves as functioning outside of the line, the Amish have drawn. But, their identity hasn't yet sufficiently coalesced into the other that the Amish boundaries insist on. In other words, unless you conform and submit you are the other.

The danger I'm trying to point out is that, while the constitution grants the Amish the freedom to practice their faith, Rep. Pitts' collusion with the Amish to project their morality onto those who aren't conforming to their standards anymore is extremely un-American. The Amish kids that are active and involved in the community don't need Rep. Pitts' protection. So the only ones left for his efforts to have an effect on are the ones who have stepped outside of the Amish communities' boundaries. Promoting the idea that they shouldn't go on a reality tv show is the same as saying, any other citizen shouldn't, which is a pretty asinine thing for a congress person to be doing.



Since the reasons Rep. Pitts gave for doing what he did are clearly bogus, there's only one explanation I can see that makes sense of his actions. Rep. Pitts used his power as an elected official of the U.S. government to promote the religious agenda of one select group of constituents, at the expense of another group, for the sole reason of garnering votes.

THE AMISH AND THE ARTS

The Amish don't benefit from literature and film in the way the rest of society does because their issues are not examined. Example..... Witness was about the problems of a big city cop. The Amish were just props. Sure, the Amish were portrayed well, but what if Peter Maas' only tried to portray NYC well when he wrote Serpico. I'm not suggesting that there is corruption among the Amish in need of an expo'se. But that there's a lack of awareness about the consequences of making the choices that the Amish have made. But, you say, there's a lot of good scholars doing great work on the Amish.

AN EXERPT FROM AN EARLIER POST


Donald Kraybill, a prominent scholar of the Amish is widely accepted and respected as the preeminent authority on Amish life, but I couldn't fully address my concerns without questioning the impact of his work on the community he studies and the perception it fosters in his readers.Kraybill showcases the communal values of the Amish and juxtaposes them with western cultures individualism, which is a worthy effort for a social scientist, but he fails to ask whether there is a cost to conforming to those values. Since the Amish are a closed authoritarian society, there is a poverty around self-reflective activities that normally enable societies to work through social issues and moral dilemmas. Kraybill is an outside agent that could at a minimum create language for the issues that need to be wrestled with.Labeling a problem is the first step towards determining a response. Kraybill's consistent rose colored view of Amish life colludes with the Amish leaders efforts to portray, any acknowledgment of problems within the church, as heresy. This squelches dissent or identification of problems and consequently any solutions. Because of this collusion Kraybill's legacy in the end, may be one of having harmed the community he studied.Kraybill's contribution to how the rest of the world sees the Amish is also problematic. There is a real danger if the general public's perception of the Amish is too simple or rose colored. Our relationship with the Amish is going to demand practical real life solutions. Romanticism will hinder that effort. One of the problems affecting Kraybills work is a lack of aggressive peer review. Because the Amish are a closed society it is hard for anyone else to obtain information so they can test or refute Kraybills conclusions. After the shooting at the Amish school in Nickel Mines Kraybill was reported to have given over one hundred interviews. It doesn't matter how accurate he is on ninety percent of his work, with that kind of coverage if ten percent of his work is flawed, with no other works to serve as an emollient for his errors, the damage can be enormous.