Live Virtual Lecture: “From Farm to Farmers’ Market: Amish Folk Society in the Age of Fast Capitalism” with Simon Bronner
Thursday, March 25 @ 6:00 pm CST
This presentation examines the twenty-first-century economic shift in Amish communities from local producers and artisans to participants in a national market system. One example is the dramatically increased presence, and in many Pennsylvania locations the domination, of Amish vendors in farmers’ markets. Although it might look as if they have changed their traditional values centered on closeness to the land, the Amish have created a special niche that mediates between the slow capitalism of a producer or communitarian farm economy and the fast capitalism of a market system in the digital age. Not motivated by profit, they have forced a re-examination of cultural factors in changing relations of the Amish to “the English” and indeed within Amish society.