Class and Slavery

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Daniel Wells
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
American South ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Old South ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The American South ◽  
Southern Society

This article reviews scholarship on class and slavery. The evolution of the historiography on class and slavery is complex, and historians have only recently begun to revisit some of their basic assumptions about class formation, class ideology, and the social structure of the Old South more broadly. New studies raise questions about the ways in which human bondage and class intertwined in slave societies, particularly the American South, and have initiated a discernible shift in the field. While scholars profitably continue to study the plantation and the lives of masters and slaves, many historians now call for a wider view of southern society to take account of life in the region outside the plantation, and the various ways in which different classes of whites interacted with, and were shaped by, the institution of slavery. It is with these new calls that the subject of class is enjoying resurgence.

A Good Man is a Trickster to Find

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Tye
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
American South ◽  
Flannery O'connor ◽  
Southern Gothic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The American South ◽  
Over The Top ◽  
Traditional Storytelling

In my presentation, I will demonstrate the contrast between the pioneer of the Southern Grotesque, Flannery O’Connor, and her famous story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” with Taylor’s use of the gothic in his YA novel. O’Connor adapted her version of the gothic from her predecessors such as Shelley and Poe. But she veers away from the creation of a fantastical monster tradition of the Romantics to drive the focus of the “monstrous” to the very human but harmful behaviors of her characters. Similarly, Taylor’s narrative does away with the over-the-top fantasy of the Romantic tradition and instead chooses to set the narrative in a realistic space with relevant characters. The difference between O’Connor and Taylor is that in O’Connor’s Southern Gothic the setting is the pinnacle of her story while Taylor’s Indigeneity shines through with his humor, traditional storytelling, and orality in his narrative. Differences aside, it is clear that the motive of each text is a call for social reform in O’Connor’s criticism of the social structure of the American South and in Taylor’s criticism of colonization.

Prejudice, Discrimination, and Alienation in Educational Environments

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-60
Author(s):  
Didem Çelik Yılmaz ◽  
Türkan Argon
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
School Administrators ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Educational Organizations ◽  
Educational Environments ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
The Social ◽  
Students First ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Negative Impacts

In today's societies where cultural singularity is almost destroyed, diversity can be an important richness, thanks to individuals displaying peace-based approaches. Schools are affected by this diversity and will continue to be cultivated as small but highly effective stakeholders of the social structure. It can be said that it is important for educational organizations to gain human values before teaching theoretical lessons to their students and that the necessary studies should be carried out both for school administrators and teachers and for students. First of all, raising awareness on this issue is a great need during the construction of the peace society. Therefore, in addition to contributing to the literature with this study, it is aimed to present different and diverse perspectives of prejudice, discrimination, and alienation of students and teachers, giving examples of cause and effect relationships. It is also aimed to make suggestions to reduce negative impacts and thus to raise awareness on the subject.

Productivity and Income Distribution in the Post-Bellum South

1974 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 422-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen DeCanio
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
American South ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Agricultural Labor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
Southern Society ◽  
Basic Characteristics

Racial discord, political violence, and agrarian unrest are integral to the history of the American South from the close of the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. The economy of the region had undergone traumatic changes during the war, not the least of which were the destruction of large amounts of physical capital and the transition of the black agricultural labor force from slavery to freedom. The disruption of production during the war was followed by attempts to reorganize agriculture through a variety of institutional arrangements, including wage labor, cash renting, and widespread use of the sharecropping form of land tenure. Many of the legal and cultural manifestations of the racial prejudice which has long outlived chattel slavery made their appearance during these years. Both contemporary observers and modern historians have recognized possible connections between the economic conditions and the political or institutional developments of the period, yet certain basic characteristics of the post-bellum southern economy have never been adequately determined. Consequently, the influence of economic forces in southern society and political life has remained obscure.

“States of Rebellion”: Civil War, Rural Unrest, and the Agrarian Question in the American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno, 1861–1865

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrico Dal Lago
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Rural Setting ◽  
Formation Continue ◽  
Rural Workers ◽  
Agrarian Question ◽  
Peasant Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The American South

To date, only a handful of scholars, most notably C.L.R. James and Eugene Genovese, have seen slave rebellions and peasant revolts as having anything in common. Fewer scholars still would be prepared to accept the assumption that slaves and peasants were agrarian working classes that shared significant characteristics. Yet, the issues of rural unrest and class formation continue to haunt the historiography of both slave and peasant societies long after James' and Genovese's studies, and have forced several historians to revise and broaden their definitions of class conflict as a means to describe the social transformations of several rural regions. In this essay, I focus on the American South as a case study of a slave society and on the Italian South, or Mezzogiorno, as a case study of a peasant society. Notwithstanding the fundamental differences between the social structures of these two regions, in both cases debates on the class character of rural workers began when leftist historians raised the possibility of applying Marxist categories to their particular historical conditions. In both cases, they were dealing with a ‘south’ characterized by a preeminently agricultural economy and a persistent social and political conservatism. In both cases, too, the debate has moved from broad theoretical positions to the explanation of specific instances of class conflict in a rural setting—the slaves' resistance to their masters and the peasants' resistance to their landlords, respectively—and then on to a criticism of the Marxist approach to the problem.

Dying to Eat

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
American South ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Korean Chinese ◽  
The American South

In Dying to Eat: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Food, Death, and the Afterlife, Candi K. Cann examines the role of food in dying, death, bereavement, and the afterlife. The coeditors seek to illuminate on the intersection of food and death in various cultures as well as fill an overlooked scholarly niche. Dying to Eat offers a multi-cultural perspective from contributors examining Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Latin American, European, Middle Eastern and American rituals and customs surrounding death and food. The contributors discuss a wide array of topics, including the role of death in the Islamic Sufi approach to food, the intersection of Buddhism, Catholicism, and Shamanism, as well as the role of casseroles and church cookbooks in the American South. The collection will provide not only food for thought on the subject of death and afterlife, but also theories, methods, recipes, and instructions on how and why food is used in dying, death, mourning, and afterlife rituals and practices in different cultural and religious contexts.

Crown Land and Royal Patronage in Mid-Sixteenth Century England

1980 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine S.H. Wyndham
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Royal Patronage ◽  
Regular Source ◽  
Accurate Picture ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mary Tudor ◽  
Localized Knowledge

Yf you thincke yt to be suche lande as I maye geve wythe my honor, I shall thincke yt verye well bestowyd, for that he is one that hathe well desarvyd yt and hathe had no kynde of recompence.So wrote Mary Tudor to the Marquis of Winchester in 1554. The subject of the Queen's approval was Sir Edmund Peckham, one of her most trusted councilors. The result of that approval was an outright gift of land worth nearly one hundred pounds a year.Land, the basis of the social structure of the age, was one of the crucial instruments of patronage. The crown estate not only had its financial function as a regular source of income and an emergency source of realizable capital, but one directly relevant to social control and to government. It was a means by which past services to the prince could be rewarded and future services perhaps anticipated. The way land was used for this purpose and whether the frequency and extent of its usage can throw any light on problems and methods of government are questions meriting close consideration. The period taken here—the late 1530s to the early 1570s—spans several very different phases of government: how far did policy towards patronage vary from phase to phase? And how far did these variations reflect the needs of each successive government?To acquire an accurate picture of the use of the crown's estate, some localized knowledge is essential.

scholarly journals Hegel's Guilty Conscience: Three Forms of Schuld in the Phenomenology of Spirit

PhaenEx ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-55
Author(s):  
MATTHEW LYONS CONGDON
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Code ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral System ◽  
The Subject

In what we might call its particularly Christian manifestation, “guilt” denotes the feeling or fact of having offended, the failure to uphold an ethical code. Under such terms, “guilt” connotes negative consequences: shame, punishment, and estrangement. Yet, penetrating further into its meaning and value, one finds that guilt extends beyond this narrow classification, playing a productive, necessary, and ineluctable role for recognitive sociality. This paper examines guilt as it appears in Hegel’s thinking. I find that Hegel’s understanding of Schuld (guilt) in the Phenomenology, undergoes a crucial development over the course of the chapter titled, “Spirit,” culminating in a robust understanding of guilt that represents not a hopelessly broken bond, but a bond that awaits its fulfillment, its very incompleteness exerting a palpable pull upon the guilty party towards its fulfillment. I examine three key moments in “Spirit”: Hegel’s treatments of Antigone, the French Revolution, and the confession and forgiveness of evil. By comparing these moments, I distinguish between “abstract guilt,” guilt that only brings about shame and punishment, and what we might call “determinate guilt”: guilt that brings about action, reminds one of her/his indebtedness to the other. Understanding the development of guilt from the beginning to end of “Spirit” provides an entryway into a discussion of the social and political relevance of Hegel’s conception of the subject as—in a certain sense—always already guilty. I go on to argue that guilt as indebtedness and responsibility only exists as embedded within an already recognitive social structure. Re-thinking guilt as responsibility is not, therefore, a call to a new objective a priori moral system. Rather, it invites us to think through our recognitive being-together in a way that shakes off its metaphysical fetters. Such an ethics of recognitive intersubjectivity is an infinite task—not in the futile sense of the “unhappy consciousness”—but in the sense that we are responsible for constantly understanding, critiquing, and reforming ethical commitments that can only be (understood as) ours.

Black, Slave, Woman—The Role of Slave Women in the Ante-bellum South

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-154
Author(s):  
Chin Yu Chen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Black Women ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Antebellum South ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The American South

There is a famous Chinese proverb which says “a good man never fights with a woman.” From the viewpoint of this Chinese custom, women should always be respected. This maxim certainly was never applied to Black women in the Ante-bellum south of the United States prior to the Civil War. The intent of this paper is to bring to the attention of the reader some of the inhumanity practiced on slave women when they were required to work, without pay, on the plantations in the American South before that country’s Civil War. The women learned quickly to “respect” the “lash” which beat them if they did not do their work properly, or sassed their master. Slavery, at its best, is a terrible institution, and this paper does not address the subject of slavery in other parts of the world. This study is designed to study the plight of Black women, and their struggles, in that time of supposed Southern “gentility.” This study will also attempt to provide an insight into the work and family life of Black women in the era of the Antebellum South.

Black Yellow Fever Immunities, Innate and Acquired, as Revealed in the American South

1977 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth F. Kiple ◽  
Virginia H. Kiple
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
American South ◽  
West African ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Cheap Labor ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The American South ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Differential Experience

West Africa’s disease environment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was decidedly hazardous to the health of Europeans who ventured there. Comtemporary observers reported die-offs of white troops reaching the 80 percent mark annually, while the loss of one half of a ship’s company on the coast was not all that unusual. Philip Curtin has calculated that on the average England’s loss of white troops ranged between 300-700 per 1,000 mean strength per annum with his most recent word on the subject placing the overall white death toll at about half of the white soldiers, government officials, and civilian personnel who reached West African shores. K. G. Davies, on the other hand, would have the “risks of the African station” even higher with an individual facing “three chances in five of being dead within a year.”West African natives by contrast positively thrived amidst European death. Again referring to Curtin’s data, the biggest killer of whites by far was “fever.” The fevers of Sierra Leone, for example, dispatched white troops at the rate of 410.2 per thousand per annum during the years 1819-1836, yet caused the death of only 2.5 African troops per thousand per annum. A similar differential experience with fevers occurred throughout West Africa—an experience which Professor Curtin has suggested constituted a crucial reason for the Atlantic slave traded Europeans would have preferred to locate plantations in tropical Africa close to a seemingly inexhaustible source of cheap labor, but they were persuaded by the lethal nature of West African fevers to locate those plantations instead in the more salubrious New World. Put plainly, they found the expense of transporting African workers across the Atlantic eminently preferable to challenging the odds against their own survival in Africa.

scholarly journals Law, Society, Identity, and the Making of the Jim Crow South: Travel and Segregation on Tennessee Railroads, 1875–1905

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (02) ◽  
pp. 377-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Mack
Keyword(s):  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
De Jure Segregation ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
The American South ◽  
Southern Society ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Jim Crow South ◽  
Modern Era

This article reexamines the well-known debate over the origins of de jure segregation in the American South, which began in 1955 with the publication of C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Arguing that the debate over Woodward's thesis implicates familar but outmoded ways of looking at sociolegal change and Southern society, the article proposes a reorientation of this debate using theoretical perspectives taken from recent work by legal historians, critical race theorists, and historians of race, class, and gender. This article examines the advent of railroad segregation in Tennessee (the state that enacted the nation's first railroad segregation statute) in order to sketch out these themes, arguing that de jure segregation was brought about by a dialectic between legal, social, and identity-based phenomena. This dialectic did not die out with the coming of de jure segregation; rather it continued into the modern era.

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