Coping with Poverty: The Social Contexts of Neighborhood, Work, and Family in the African American Community. Edited by Sheldon  Danziger and Ann Chih  Lin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Pp. 284. $65.00 (cloth); $27.95 (paper).

2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 688-691
Author(s):  
Kevin Roy
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
African American Community ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ann Arbor

Finding “pax plantation” at Camp Gordon, Georgia: Historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips and World War I

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 564-599
Author(s):  
John David Smith
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War I ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Intelligence ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
The University

This article examines the World War I service of the University of Michigan historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877–1934). Phillips worked first with black recruits as a volunteer officer for the Young Men's Christian Association at Camp Gordon, Georgia, and later as a U.S. Army Military Intelligence officer in Washington, DC. In these years, Phillips ranked as America's foremost authority on the antebellum South generally and of African American slavery in particular. In 1918 he published his landmarkAmerican Negro Slavery. While on leave from Ann Arbor, Phillips taught English and French, planned educational and recreational programs, and supervised the management and construction of buildings at Camp Gordon's segregated facilities. Phillips's daily interactions with black troops in the cantonment reaffirmed—at least as he saw it—his conclusions that North American slavery had been a relatively benign institution, his belief in the virtues of plantation paternalism and in the management of subject peoples by educated whites, and his attitude that contemporary race relations were generally harmonious. Phillips's observations of African American recruits validated his conviction that blacks benefited most from white-run, regimented organizations and strengthened his belief in economic assimilation and social segregation. His military intelligence work confirmed Phillips's overall commitment to conservative change, whether in foreign or race relations.

Altruistically Inclined? The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, and the Origins of Reciprocity. By Alexander J. Field. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Pp. xvi, 373. $65.00.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 298-300
Author(s):  
Joel Mokyr
Keyword(s):  
Economic Behavior ◽  
Salvation Army ◽  
Human Society ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Interesting Phenomenon ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Standard Model ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Gold Coins

Alex Field is an eminent economic historian who has made important contributions to the field. In this book he shows the ambition and the erudition to venture into a wider area, and criticize the entire practice of economics and the social sciences in our time. The paradox he raises in this book has been widely discussed in recent years. It is that the standard model of economics starts off with the assumption that the individual is rational and utility maximizing, and thus will behave in certain predictable ways, among them that they will play “defect” in strategic games that have the nature of one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma. Yet in the real world people are nicer and less selfish than the grim neoclassical model predicts. Altruism—acting against one's direct interest—is an important part of economic behavior. The interesting phenomenon, says Field, is not only that we drop anonymously gold coins in a Salvation Army box or serve without pay on boring university committees. The important things are acts of omission: members of human society do not normally commit acts of aggression and treason even when we have a chance to do so and they are demonstrably to our advantage.

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