Martin Ruef: Between Slavery and Capitalism: The Legacy of Emancipation in the American South

Abstract

Book Review Administrative Science Quarterly 2015, Vol. 60(3)NP37–NP40 O The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/ journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0001839215577630 asq.sagepub.com Martin Ruef: Between Slavery and Capitalism: The Legacy of Emancipation in the American South. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. 285 pp. $35.00/£24.95, cloth. This compelling analysis of the swiftly changing economic and social institu- tions in the American south after the Civil War should be of interest to eco- nomic and organizational sociologists, stratification researchers, and labor and economic historians. Ruef’s central argument is that the emancipation of slaves generated great uncertainty for all economic actors in the south—the former slaves themselves, the planters who used to own them, the agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau who sought to smooth the transition, and white workers, merchants, and politicians who had supported slavery as a central precept of southern society. As in neoclassical economic theory, these actors were often subject to classical uncertainty (Knight, 1921), in that they could not predict the outcomes of their decisions to engage (or not) in economic transactions: although the set of possible outcomes was known, their probability distribution was unknown. But more than that, Ruef shows that these actors faced true or categorical uncertainty (Knight, 1921): the set of possible outcomes was also unknown, which made the probability distribution of outcomes not just unknown, but unknowable. All of these economic actors had to navigate a terra incognita, an institutional landscape that was so different from their old one that preexisting cognitive schemas and routines provided little if any guidance for their journeys. Emancipated slaves had to figure out what kinds of work they could do and what form and amount of payment they would accept for that work. Planters had to create new kinds of employment relations to offer to former slaves, determine what kinds of work they would offer and how much they would pay for that work, and decide how they would organize the work of agricultural pro- duction. Agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau had to figure out how to help for- mer slaves acquire the basic labor-market skills (literacy and numeracy) that few of them were allowed to have before the war, develop new kinds of labor contracts and supervise their execution, and handle shortages of food, shelter, clothing, and medical care in the aftermath of the war. White workers, small farmers outside the plantation class, and merchants had to reconsider their status vis-a`-vis former slaves and find new means to manage that status. Financiers had to determine how much to invest in agriculture, industry, and trade, and what type of business concerns would be most profitable and least risky. Politicians had to develop policies that would help lift the southern econ- omy and cater to (or, less frequently, oppose) local cultural mores. Although the paths these economic actors traced through this new world were guided by categories of economic actors and actions that prevailed in the Downloaded from asq.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA BERKELEY LIB on August 5, 2015