 Slavery and collectivism in the postbellum American SouthYeonha Jung Journal of Comparative Economics, 2025, vol. 53, issue 2, 534-558 Abstract: The deep marks of American slavery extend to cultural traits. This study suggests that historical slave concentration was followed by more collectivist cultures, with this relationship becoming evident after Reconstruction. Our proposed mechanism rests on the interaction between slavery and subsequent institutional changes: historical prevalence of slavery led to a stronger implementation of post-Reconstruction policies aimed at restoring the racial hierarchy, contributing to the reinforcement of group identity and collectivism. County-level evidence supports this hypothesis. Using the share of uncommon names as a proxy for individualism-collectivism, we show that the relationship between slavery and collectivism emerged after Reconstruction. Beyond the temporal coincidence, we present a case study on anti-enticement laws to investigate the institutional mechanism of this cultural shift. The cultural legacy of slavery persists to this day, as evidenced by survey-based outcomes and measures of civic engagement. Keywords: American south; Collectivism; Culture; Individualism; Institution; Race; Racial identity; Reconstruction; Slavery; United states (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:53:y:2025:i:2:p:534-558 DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2025.03.006 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier |
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