Hutterite religion and community: how Hutterites “dress” and are “dressed” by their world

For over ten years I have conducted ethnographic field research to understand Hutterites on their own terms and to get a glimpse of their socioreligious world. The quotidian instances and lived experiences that I observed in colonies spanning three Canadian provinces and five U.S. states revealed that Hutterites are much more divided and diversified than previous scholarship has depicted. I have found nuance, complexity, and diversity in Hutterite identity formations. Through my research on Hutterites, I have found a microcosm of the various issues that work to form identities and divisions in the US and Canada. Hutterites are rural blue-collar conservative Christians, and understanding their values and identities is essential to understanding and unpacking these divisions. In my dissertation, I accomplish this by examining ways that Hutterites in colonies across the US and Canada “dress” and are “dressed” by their social, emotional, and material world. I use the term “dress” as a synecdoche for all the embodied, emotional, and material practices in which Hutterites engage and engender in their daily lives.