Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region - Softcover

Yorgason, Ethan R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252077717 ISBN 13: 9780252077715

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2010

Synopsis

In this unique study, Ethan R. Yorgason examines the Mormon "culture region" of the American West, which in the late nineteenth century was characterized by sexual immorality, communalism, and anti-Americanism but is now marked by social conservatism. Foregrounding the concept of region, Yorgason traces the conformist-conservative trajectory that arose from intense moral and ideological clashes between Mormons and non-Mormons from 1880 to 1920. 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, community, and home life. Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region charts how Mormons and non-Mormons resolved their cultural contradictions 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.

About this title

Book Description:

Charting the shift from radicalism to conservatism in the Mormon American West

About the Author:

Ethan R. Yorgason is an adjunct assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Brigham Young University, Hawai'i.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0252077717
• ISBN 13: 9780252077715
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280