Item Detail
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11884
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3
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0
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English
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The Mormon Hive : A Study of the Bee and Beehive Symbols in Nineteenth Century Mormon Culture
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Carson, CA
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California State University Dominguez Hills
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163
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Master's Thesis
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'From antiquity to the middle of the eighteenth century, humans used the bee and beehive symbols to represent monarchy. Political and social changes resulted in a reinterpretation of the bee and beehive symbols during the eighteenth century. Republicans ignored the royalist associations of bees and beehives, and used them to represent values of the new republicanism. In nineteenth-century America, the Mormons encountered the bee and beehive symbols while participating in the rites of Freemasonry. In the nineteenth century, Mormons used the bee and beehive symbols to represent the Kingdom of God on the earth in the form of the Mormon theocracy in territorial Utah. This study focuses on interpreting the bee and beehive symbols in nineteenth-century Mormon culture through a study of Mormon sermons, hymns, and folk art. This study of these symbols opens a window on the ideological differences between a democratic culture and a theocratic subculture.' (author's abstract)