Populism and Lynching in Louisiana, 1889-1896: A Test of Erikson's Theory of the Relationship between Boundary Crises and Repressive Justice

Abstract

This paper applies Erikson 's theory of the relationship between crises in a community's solidarity and its exercise of repressive justice to the relationship between the Populist disruption of the Solid South and the incidence of lynching. This application points out certain problems in Erikson S formulation that can be resolved by a systematic examination o f the distribution of lynchings among the parishes of Louisiana and shows how Erikson's theoretic statement provides an interpretation of relationships between a parish's lynching incidence and its social and political characteristics. The analysis illustrates how econometric techniques may be applied to historical data in the process of sociological theory construction. Inspired by Durkheim's classic formulation crease in r e p resssive justice (a "crime of the relationship between repressive justice wave").' He examines three disruptions of and mechanical solidarity,' Erikson's (1966) solidarity in seventeenth century Massachustudy, Wayward Puritans, states that the dis-setts and argues that such disruptions would ruption of solidarity (in his terms a "bounda-precipitate sudden increases in the incidence ry crisis") produces a sudden and dramatic in-of repressive justice. Thus, in the late 1630s the increasing power of the clergy became incompatible with the Puritan doctrine of the *I am indebted to Kai Erikson, both for his own priesthood of all believers. During this boundwork and for his comments on this project at several points along the way. I am grateful to Marc Bern-ary crisis, the colony prosecuted a group of stein, Amnon Igra, John Meyer and Stephen Robert-Antinomian heretics led by Anne Hutchinson, son for critiques and technical assistance. The tren-who took the extreme position that laymen chant editorial advice of Morris Zelditch and the could challenge the authority of the clergy. anonymous reviewers improved this paper consider-Some twenty years later a second boundary ably. For the remaining errors and ambiguities, I am accountable. crisis occurred as the New Englanders found ' Durkheim (1893) distinguishes two forms of themselves increasingly in conflict with the social solidarity, mechanical and organic. Mechanical progressive tendencies of their Old World solidarity is based on similarity of individual characbrethren, particularly on the issue of religious teristics (e.g., common race and region) and is toleration. During this second crisis, the characterized by consensus on values, harmony (if not identity) of interests and unity of purpose. Dif-colony prosecuted Quakers, people who refusferences exist among members in their attributes, ed to defer to authority, who disrupted but such differences are regarded as secondary or church services, who paraded naked through peripheral, not as bases for organization and action. the streets and who otherwise challenged the In contrast, organic solidarity is based on diversity of Puritan establishment. Finally, toward the end individual interests and is characterized by interdependence and excha...

Practicing What They Preach? Lynching and Religion in the American South, 1890–1929

“…The effect might be expected to attenuate when community members are divided into several competing religious organizations. In other words, a common Christianity might be expected to produce moral consensus – in this case in support of white supremacy – but if Christian denominations with different doctrines and rituals coexist, this may heighten competition within that locality and weaken the bonds of moral community (Finke and Stark 2005; Inverarity 1976). …”

“…Godoy (2006) similarly identifies that collective violence served to unify communities in which moral community was eroding. Some scholars interrogate the related “legal breakdown” and “popular justice” claims (such as Inverarity 1976), or Durkheim’s laws of quantitative and qualitative change (Massey and Myers 1989), but the results have typically been weak. 7 Senechal de la Roche’s work, while employing Black’s paradigm of pure sociology, 8 rather than Durkheim, focuses on micro-level processes linked to conditions of community embeddedness, and particularly the differences in level of community integration between the victim and perpetrators.…”

“…To control for the association between the political-side of interracial competition and racial violence, we include the percent of all votes cast for candidates that were not Democrats in Presidential elections, combining votes for Republican candidates and third parties as other researchers have done (Tolnay and Beck 1995). We provide a more precise breakdown of this measure for the 1890 decade, with additional analyses to assess the possible relationship between the Populist movement and racial violence (Inverarity 1976; Soule 1992), by using the percent of the Presidential vote cast for the Populist candidate. While political measures occasionally had statistically significant effects, the religious measures were robust to their inclusion.…”

A Statistical Analysis of Crime Against Foreigners in Unified Germany

“…In particular Heitmeyer (1992) (Kniitter, 1993). During the same period, 457 violent right-wing crimes took place in the West (BMI, 1994 (Sippel, 1993 Danzger, 1975, Inverarity, 1976, and Olzak, 1989 Table 4. Columns (1) and (2), and (5) and (6) .482 (.343) .787 (.350) .768 (.350) Log Population Density .597 (-527) .132 (.525) 4.258 (3.458) 3.981 (3.421) 3.843 (3.569) Rural .623 (.532) 1.062 (.524) .380 (.538) .…”

IUS bituminous:Solidarity and legal order in a dangerous work environment

“…Zürcher (1968) demonstrated the salience of mechanical solidarity in the disaster work crew and surmised that what he saw being enacted were ephemeral roles that served to support the shift back to organic solidarity. Inverarity (1976), in testing Erikson's theory of the relationship of boundary crises to repressive punishment, suggested that whole societies (eg., Southern whites) could shift in and out of the mechanical form. Inverarity's contention was criticized by Pope and Ragin (1977), who pointed out that Durkheim did not depict societies as fluctuating between mechanical and organic solidarity.…”