Amish peoplehood: A critical synthesis of eight decades of theorizing

Abstract

Across eight decades, researchers have advanced several peoplehood theorizations of the Amish, a rapidly growing, fundamentally rural, North American population. However, these theorizations have been proposed implicitly or piecemeal and are poorly understood on the whole. This makes theoretical engagement difficult, which then limits knowledge advancement, allows fallacious concepts to shape results, and makes research priorities difficult to justify. This article clarifies Amish peoplehood theorizations by synthesizing and evaluating seven major theorizations. Early structural-functional approaches emphasized social integration and resistance to change, culminating in Hostetler's theorization of Amish as a change-adverse folk society. Olshan then countered, theorizing Amish as change-accommodating, calculating agents making value-rational choices, while Enninger's alternative was a thorough semiotic framework linking micro-interactions to macro-structures. Following Hostetler, Kraybill's "negotiating with modernity" perspective dichotomized Amish/outside but permitted system-reinforcing hybrid changes. Using a "patchwork" analogy, Nolt/Meyers emphasized internal Amish diversity while Hurst/McConnell argued diversity came from "terrains of tension" between internal/external forces and structure/agency. Finally, Reschly's Bourdieuian analysis framed Amish as possessing "community repertoires" of action, explaining both coordinated and contested changes within social fields. Reoccurring theoretical challenges include reification of social structures and overstructuring individual action, conceptual overreliance on "boundaries," and undertheorization of power, conflict, and agency. Moving forward, scholars should drop value-laden developmental language (traditional/modern), engage broader disciplinary conversations, resolve structure/agency problems, conduct comparative population research, and encourage theoretical plurality. By rendering existing peoplehood theorizations cohesively explicit and critically engaging their claims, this article moves scholarship toward more intentional engagement with population theorization.

Keywords: boundary maintenance; diversity; ethnicity; religious sect; semiotics; structural functionalism.