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 "Click for larger image")
Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region
Ethan R. Yorgason
Cloth978-0-252-02853-3
$32.50
| Pub Date: | 2003 |
| Pages: | 280 pages |
| Dimensions: | 6 x 9 in. |
| Illustrations: | 1 line drawing |
Awards and Recognition:
Winner of the Best First Book Award, the Mormon History Association, 2004.
Analyzes how the moral/culture shifted at the turn-of-the-twentieth-century enabling Mormons and non-Mormons to live peacefully together for the first time. How they moved from one of the most liberal regional communities to one of the most conservative.
In the late nineteenth century the Mormon "culture region" of the American West was considered radical, characterized by sexual immorality, communalism, and anti-Americanism. Today, social conservatism marks the region. How did this shift occur? In this unique study, Ethan R. Yorgason foregrounds the concept of region and traces the conformist-conservative trajectory that arose from intense moral and ideological clashes between Mormons and non-Mormons from 1880 to 1920. Non-Mormons worried that Mormons would establish an un-American society in the West, while Mormons feared for the very existence of their church. An example of the new regional geography, Yorgason's work treats culture as an arena of political struggle. Looking through the lenses of regional geography, history, and cultural studies, Yorgason investigates shifting moral orders relating to gender authority, economic responsibility, and national loyalty. He particularly focuses on Mormon feminism, communitarianism, nationalism, and home life. Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region charts the cultural contradictions of both Mormons and non-Mormons and how they were resolved over time by a progressive narrowing of the range of moral positions on gender (in favor of Victorian gender relations), the economy (in favor of individual economics), and the nation (identifying with national power and might). Mormons and non-Mormons together constructed a regime of effective coexistence, while retaining regional distinctiveness.
Subjects:
Mormon Studies / Religion / Cultural Studies / Western Americana
