28 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010
about the tragedy through media and Internet
sources. Thanks to the Internet, audio of Jim
Jones’s directives to his followers will survive
electronically, as will many documentaries
produced since the murder-suicides. Very little
information from these sources, however, winds
up in scholarship, since academics tend to rely
upon the written word—especially the written
word of earlier academics. Undoubtedly in the
future, some academics will return to archives
and mine information afresh, but until new
research emerges, scholars and others will have
to rely upon earlier publications in their efforts
to understand the violent deaths of 918 people.5
Those of us who see Jonestown as the epitome
of cultic control, manipulation, and abuse may
find aspects of scholarship on that fateful
community startling. The scholarship that I paid
particular attention to appears in the book-length
monographs that academics (people with
appointments in colleges or universities) have
produced on Jonestown, especially monographs
published by university presses. For years I have
been collecting these monographs, as well as
journalistic, religious, and conspiratorial
accounts about Jonestown and its demise. For
this article, I supplemented my own collection
with additional volumes that I obtained through
my university’s library (including from the Kent
Collection on Alternative Religions), and I spent
hours searching new- and used-book Internet
sites for more titles (which I either purchased or
ordered through interlibrary loan). I also
checked bibliographies within the academic
monographs.
Because in this article I am concerned about
what subsequent generations will learn about
Jonestown based upon existing scholarship, I
wanted to identify which monographs are likely
to have impact in the future. To determine
books’ likely impact, I checked (in mid-
November 2009) the titles on the OCLC Online
Union Catalog (WorldCat) database, which
gives the names and total numbers of libraries
around the world that own particular volumes. I
5 As indicated by Rebecca Moore, “[t]his number includes four of
Congressman Leo Ryan’s party—including Ryan himself—and
one [Peoples] Temple member who were killed at the Port
Kaituma airstrip outside Jonestown, and four Temple members
who died in Georgetown [Guyana]” (Moore, 2004: 61).
assumed that the greater a book’s availability,
the more likely that future generations will have
access to it. Presented chronologically
(according to date of publication), the sociology
studies are: Ken Levi (ed.), Violence and
Religious Commitment: Implications of Jim
Jones’s Peoples Temple Movement (1982 with a
WorldCat count of 634) 6 and John Hall’s Gone
from the Promised Land: Jonestown in
American Cultural History (1987 with a
WorldCat count at 842).7 Other academics wrote
and edited additional sociological books about
Jonestown but published them with Edwin
Mellen Press—a publisher that received very
bad media coverage in 1993 for the poor review
and production standards that it applied to its
products (St. John, 1993).8 Again in
chronological order, the books are Judith Mary
Weightman, Making Sense of the Jonestown
Suicides: A Sociological History of Peoples
Temple (1983 with a WorldCat count at 363) 9
Rebecca Moore, In Defense of Peoples Temple—
and Other Essays (1988 with a WorldCat count
at 146) and two books edited by Rebecca
Moore and her husband, Fielding M. McGehee
III—The Need for a Second Look at Jonestown
(1989 with a WorldCat count at 152) and New
Religious Movements, Mass Suicide, and
Peoples Temple: Scholarly Perspectives on a
Tragedy (1989 with a WorldCat count at 202).
A number of religious studies and
6 According to the book’s cover, Ken Levi (PhD) taught sociology
at the University of Texas at San Antonio at the time of the book’s
publication.
7 According to the back of the book, John R. Hall was an associate
professor of sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
8 St. John (1993: 22) referred to the Edwin Mellen Press as “a
quasi-vanity press cunningly disguised as an academic publishing
house...,” and manuscripts did not go through a review process (St.
John 1993: 24). Its owner, Herbert Richardson, used the press’s
proofreaders as a money-making enterprise and also “threatened to
take a quarter out of the proofreaders’ paychecks for every mistake
they corrected past a certain number” (St. John, 1993: 23).
Richardson sued St. John and Lingua Franca over the article but
lost and about a year after St. John’s article appeared, St.
Michael’s College (which is part of the University of Toronto
system) dismissed Richardson for “gross misconduct” (Lingua
Franca, 2000). For a short analysis of the libel case between
Edwin Mellen Press and Lingua Franca (albeit one published by
Edwin Mellen Press), see Reid, 2006.
9 This book is a version of Weightman’s 1983 Ph.D. dissertation
from Drew University in Religion and Sociology entitled,
Breakdown in the Creation of a New Reality: A Sociological
Analysis of the Peoples Temple. A 1989 source suggests that she
may not have remained in academia (Moore and McGehee [eds.]
1989: 249–250.
about the tragedy through media and Internet
sources. Thanks to the Internet, audio of Jim
Jones’s directives to his followers will survive
electronically, as will many documentaries
produced since the murder-suicides. Very little
information from these sources, however, winds
up in scholarship, since academics tend to rely
upon the written word—especially the written
word of earlier academics. Undoubtedly in the
future, some academics will return to archives
and mine information afresh, but until new
research emerges, scholars and others will have
to rely upon earlier publications in their efforts
to understand the violent deaths of 918 people.5
Those of us who see Jonestown as the epitome
of cultic control, manipulation, and abuse may
find aspects of scholarship on that fateful
community startling. The scholarship that I paid
particular attention to appears in the book-length
monographs that academics (people with
appointments in colleges or universities) have
produced on Jonestown, especially monographs
published by university presses. For years I have
been collecting these monographs, as well as
journalistic, religious, and conspiratorial
accounts about Jonestown and its demise. For
this article, I supplemented my own collection
with additional volumes that I obtained through
my university’s library (including from the Kent
Collection on Alternative Religions), and I spent
hours searching new- and used-book Internet
sites for more titles (which I either purchased or
ordered through interlibrary loan). I also
checked bibliographies within the academic
monographs.
Because in this article I am concerned about
what subsequent generations will learn about
Jonestown based upon existing scholarship, I
wanted to identify which monographs are likely
to have impact in the future. To determine
books’ likely impact, I checked (in mid-
November 2009) the titles on the OCLC Online
Union Catalog (WorldCat) database, which
gives the names and total numbers of libraries
around the world that own particular volumes. I
5 As indicated by Rebecca Moore, “[t]his number includes four of
Congressman Leo Ryan’s party—including Ryan himself—and
one [Peoples] Temple member who were killed at the Port
Kaituma airstrip outside Jonestown, and four Temple members
who died in Georgetown [Guyana]” (Moore, 2004: 61).
assumed that the greater a book’s availability,
the more likely that future generations will have
access to it. Presented chronologically
(according to date of publication), the sociology
studies are: Ken Levi (ed.), Violence and
Religious Commitment: Implications of Jim
Jones’s Peoples Temple Movement (1982 with a
WorldCat count of 634) 6 and John Hall’s Gone
from the Promised Land: Jonestown in
American Cultural History (1987 with a
WorldCat count at 842).7 Other academics wrote
and edited additional sociological books about
Jonestown but published them with Edwin
Mellen Press—a publisher that received very
bad media coverage in 1993 for the poor review
and production standards that it applied to its
products (St. John, 1993).8 Again in
chronological order, the books are Judith Mary
Weightman, Making Sense of the Jonestown
Suicides: A Sociological History of Peoples
Temple (1983 with a WorldCat count at 363) 9
Rebecca Moore, In Defense of Peoples Temple—
and Other Essays (1988 with a WorldCat count
at 146) and two books edited by Rebecca
Moore and her husband, Fielding M. McGehee
III—The Need for a Second Look at Jonestown
(1989 with a WorldCat count at 152) and New
Religious Movements, Mass Suicide, and
Peoples Temple: Scholarly Perspectives on a
Tragedy (1989 with a WorldCat count at 202).
A number of religious studies and
6 According to the book’s cover, Ken Levi (PhD) taught sociology
at the University of Texas at San Antonio at the time of the book’s
publication.
7 According to the back of the book, John R. Hall was an associate
professor of sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
8 St. John (1993: 22) referred to the Edwin Mellen Press as “a
quasi-vanity press cunningly disguised as an academic publishing
house...,” and manuscripts did not go through a review process (St.
John 1993: 24). Its owner, Herbert Richardson, used the press’s
proofreaders as a money-making enterprise and also “threatened to
take a quarter out of the proofreaders’ paychecks for every mistake
they corrected past a certain number” (St. John, 1993: 23).
Richardson sued St. John and Lingua Franca over the article but
lost and about a year after St. John’s article appeared, St.
Michael’s College (which is part of the University of Toronto
system) dismissed Richardson for “gross misconduct” (Lingua
Franca, 2000). For a short analysis of the libel case between
Edwin Mellen Press and Lingua Franca (albeit one published by
Edwin Mellen Press), see Reid, 2006.
9 This book is a version of Weightman’s 1983 Ph.D. dissertation
from Drew University in Religion and Sociology entitled,
Breakdown in the Creation of a New Reality: A Sociological
Analysis of the Peoples Temple. A 1989 source suggests that she
may not have remained in academia (Moore and McGehee [eds.]
1989: 249–250.
