ABSTRACT
Amish distinction and uniqueness is expressed by a desire to be apart and hermetic and at the same time to display outward expression of this status through obvious gestures that are flamboyant in their simplicity. This chapter explores how the mediation of "The Amish" is not only a matter of simple exploitation, as is often said, but is deeply and tellingly integrated into this larger system of exchange, markets, and sense-making. To the Amish community, then, the reality genre is yet another encroachment on their autonomy from broader "English" culture. An account must be lodged with the relations of the reality genre to a larger project of social regulation and governmentality in the neoliberal cultural marketplace. The subsequent "eras" of American television make much more sense when seen in the light of economics and markets. The Amish "project" is actually incommensurable with the approaches to therapy and self-help that lie behind the consensual brief of televised reality.
