Item Detail
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19709
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0
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0
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English
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"Pearls Before Swine" : Secrecy in a Mormon Polygynous Colony
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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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University of Alberta (Canada)
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M.A.
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Secrecy is a salient methodological and theoretical problem in this study of a Mormon Fundamentalist, i.e., polygynous, colony in rural Canada. Participant observation in the colony and interviews with ex-members and outsiders comprise the bulk of the data. Various explanations are offered for the events and cryptic sermons that appear to target the researcher. The saying, "don't cast your pearls before swine," emerged during the fieldwork as a metaphor for secrecy. This metaphor implies the perception of threat to something highly valued. Indeed, it seems that leaders cultivate both external and internal threats to their sacralized sexuality system. Future research should explore power's cultivation of secrecy and its own methods of concealing and selectively revealing.