TY - THES
KW - Folk medicine
KW - Waterloo County
KW - Mennonites
KW - Pennsylvania Germans
KW - Christian Eby  1842-1920
KW - Farmers
AU - James Nyce
AB - This dissertation looks at how historical problems have been defined in cultural anthropology. Attention has been given to how notions of evidence and argument have changed in anthropology since the late nineteenth century, particularly in studies of magic, tradition and the self. From this, the relationship between the self and the community, using nineteenth century Pennsylvania German materials, is taken up. In the Pennsylvania German community, a particular set of traditional notions (of magic, obligation, power and about the person) are important and give this community its characteristic form. This form and this set of notions are then explicated. Given the interest here in the self and the individual, this has been done through personal accounts and by looking at how one individual used this set of ideas. In his time, Christian Eby (1842-1920) was one of the best known charmers i.e. an important figure in a Pennsylvania German tradition of knowledge, magic and power. Eby went on to change both this role and tradition (he also did much the same thing in agriculture) in a number of important ways. These transformations were not however simply private, internal ones. They were tested and validated against experience through the work he did and the successes he had. Medicine and farming are traditional forms in which Eby was successful. What Eby did as innovator is what the German Mennonite community would expect of an individual with power. As a magical figure, he transcended and reshaped traditional ideas and conventional forms. He made new medicines and invented new social forms to accompany them. He grew new crops and created new markets. In Eby's innovations, he reshaped the world, as a magical figure would, to suit his own needs. A magical figure is often thought of as being tightly bound to an established tradition. His knowledge is seen as a closed set of ideas and his work, as simply rote performance. Eby's innovations and successes suggest that magic can be something more than this. It can, through imagination, power and work, not only change the self but bring into being new natural and cultural forms.
C5 - Conrad Grebel (UW). Stacks
C7 - English(30)
ET - Ph.D.
ID - 713
LA - English
M1 - Dissertation/Thesis
M3 - Print(0)
PB - Brown University, Providence, RI
PY - 1987
SP - 1
EP - 197
EP - 
T1 - Convention, power and the self in German Mennonite magic
ER -