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Show field investigation shows that a uniformity in folk housing is not present, we must consider as a real possibility that either consciously or unconsciously the rules for correct social behavior were "more lax." Why such laxness? Was it because Mormon frontier society was, like other frontier societies, "just being established" and therefore lacking the tight-knit social fabric capable of creating an architectural norm? As a new religion, Mormonism was indeed a new social world coming into being, 28 and such an explanation would be attractive if it were not for what we already know about the Mormon town, a social structure that can be called anything but disorganized. How then can the order of the town and the disorder of its architecture be reconciled? The answer to this question lies outside Stoklund's polarized construct. Sociologists have shown that while social order will usually generate cultural uniformity, in particular instances such order will itself allow a degree of diversity and conflict. Conversely, social disintegration and dysfunction may lead to disorder and chaos, but it can also make the outward display of order all the more imperative--a pretense, as it were, of community in the absence of a deeper sense of social integration. 29 In Folk Housing in Middle Viriginia, Henry Glassie presents such an alternative view of architectural thinking. Glassie's research .in.d icated that as the Virginians' world collapsed under the weight of the political and economic turmoil of the late eighteenth century, their architecture became more and more the same. Here, social crisis demanded a facade of cultural solidarity. 30 If we can accept the idea that architectural diversity is not inherently a product of social instability and that it can indeed serve as both a sign and source of strength and continuity, then the dichotomy of the 12 |
