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Show that close residential proximity reinforced the integrative and collective nature of Mormon society. 3 In drawing a specific connection between settlement form and social structure, Nelson's work set an interpretative precedent for much of the subsequent research dealing with nineteenth century life in Utah. The Mormons were understood to be a d1fferent sort of American: they were unified rather than individualized, they placed cooperation before competition, they elevated group interests over their separate ambitions, and they found moral standards to thwart worldly desire. 4 Such beliefs and values were undoubtedly instilled in the faithful from the pulpit, but they were also very much a product of Mormon community life itself. Village town plats were recorded for all LOS eastern cities, but it was in the West during the second half of the nineteenth century that the agricultural town surfaced as the cornerstone of Mormon settlement policy. 5 As a colonizing device, the town functioned centripetally to hold a large and diverse convert population together over the vast expanses of the Great Basin. It offered sanctuary from both known and unknown dangers of the wilderness and mitigated the isolation and loneliness often associated with pJoneering. It also controlled social behavior by making church institutions readily accessible to members and by providing the ever-constant vigil of neighbors and authorities that served as a built-in hedge against backsliding and apostasy. Exoterically the town worked to set the Mormons apart from outsiders; esoterically it worked to make the insiders like each other. It was, in short, an effective mechanism of cultural convergence. 6 As the Mormons moved into the Great Basin country, a vigorous proselytizing campaign throughout the eastern United States and northern Europe 3 |
