Maintaining Solidarity: A Look Back at the Mormon Village *

Abstract

The present study suggests, in contrast to community dissolution theories, that community is maintained through a dialogue between ideological commitment and cooperative action within a cultural framework. The research follows up on a classic rural community study series, that of Lowry Nelson's Mormon villages. Replicating Nelson's ethnographic methods, the author reevaluates the earlier findings and extends the data by several decades. Nelson's findings on Mormon village dynamics are still relevant, although in modified forms, largely through community members' commitments to a common ideology. The author concludes that affectively based communities persist despite modernization. Mormon solidarity has endured because of its early articulation of expected interaction with the broader social world and because of its commitment to both ideals and practical action.