 At the Amish Tricentennial Conference at Elizabethtown College in 1993, Hostetler was recognized and presented with a festschrift, "The Amish and the State" (Johns Hopkins, 1993) which honored his scholarly contributions.During the early 1960s Hostetler organized an extensive study of Hutterite religious, educational and social practices, with particular focus on socialization patterns, in three colonies, two in southern Canada and one in the northern U.S. state of Montana.The study was funded by the U.S. Office of Education and enlisted numerous consultants and fieldworkers, the latter headed by anthropologist Gertrude Huntington, who lived with some of her family as participating members of an Alberta colony during one summer.