Tuesday, September 20, 2011

How did the Shakers both embrace and reject growing industrialism in the United States?

The Shakers were one of many utopian groups that either
sprang up or strengthened as a response to the market revolution of the early 1800s. 
The Shakers embraced the growing industrialism, you could say, by the fact that they
created things to be sold in the market.  They tended to produce furniture, for example,
in large quantities.  By doing this, they were embracing the new, more industrialized
economy.


At the same time, the Shakers were emphatically
rejecting the new ways.  They did not own private property.  Instead, everything was
owned in common.  This was a rejection of the materialistic and individualistic mores of
the new society.


The Shakers, then, embraced industrial
society by participating to some extent in the market, but they rejected it in their own
lives by rejecting the values of materialism and individualism.

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