Paper Topic:

Vocational Shift Among the Amish

Vocational Shift among the Amish

Introduction

With a quarter of young people leaving the Amish community (Ediger 2005 , vocational shift for these young people have become important as a way of adjusting or adapting to the pressures experienced by the community . The Amish community is undergoing change because of internal and external pressures that catalyze change , which are not always within the control of community leaders . The compelling factors influencing change include the cost of agricultural production and the price of agricultural products relative to non-Amish farms using technology to

drive down cost and increase productivity . When linked with the growing population of Amish communities , dependence on agriculture as a primary economic activity may no longer suffice (Ediger , 2005 ) With family and community ties based on agricultural production , the decline in agricultural production would necessarily affect close family ties especially among the young people . Investigating the vocational shift among the Amish would show the extent and rate that the Amish community especially its young people , is coping with change

Theoretical Explanations for the Vocational Shift among the Amish

Different perspectives emerged over the Amish but there is common agreement that the Amish community is undergoing change

Lowery and Noble (2000 ) explained that the earlier perception of the Amish community is `frozen in time ' or unchanging to reflect the conscious resistance of the Amish to adjust and conform to the developments in the wider community . Kreps , Donnermeyer and Kreps (1994 disagreed with this perception and pointed out that change is not...

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