This chapter examines how the small town of Landaff, New Hampshire, has adapted to and withstood change over the last 50 years of the 20th century. It is a study of community persistence in the light of sometimes dramatic social, economic and cultural changes. This study examines Landaff's environment, agricultural and economic development, local perceptions of the community, residents' sense of place and belonging to the community, as well as the ways in which they define their community, and other social characteristics, including levels of social participation and interaction.
This chapter examines the most significant changes and describes how the Old Order Amish community has responded to forces just making themselves felt in 1940. It examines persistence and change in the major dimensions of community. These dimensions include: (1) local autonomy, which ranges from independent to dependent; (2) the community's horizontal pattern of networks and relationships, which ranges from strong to weak; (3) coincidence of service areas, which can be centralized or dispersed; and (4) psychological identification with locality, which ranges from strong to weak. In order to chart the history of the Old Order Amish and Lancaster County from 1940 to 1990, selected findings from the original study are compared to latest material as well as data collected through key informant interviews, county and local planning documents, and local newspaper coverage of events affecting the Old Order Amish. An overview of the demographic and land-use changes that have occurred within the study area and Lancaster County as a whole, is presented. The four dimensions of community life are then discussed. The chapter concludes with some general suggestions for understanding persistence and change among the Old Order Amish.
The Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania were studied by Walter Kollmorgen as part of the Rural Life Study series conducted in 1940 by the Bureau of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Kollmorgen's 1942 study provides baseline data for assessing how the Old Order Amish responded to development pressure and land use changes over the ensuing years. Drawing on a narrative approach to analyzing social change, we argue that Amish responses to change can be conceptualized in terms of two related, yet analytically distinct narrative structures -a literal interpretation of the Bible (especially the New Testament) and the Amish history of persecution and martyrdom. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of our analysis for broader community development issues in other settings.
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