Slavery and the Formation of Character
The study of American slavery, frequently consisting of a heated
debate concerning the institution's merits, has, in recent
years, branched into new directions. Scholars have become engaged
in the comparative examination of differing slave systems such as
those of North and South America. More recently, Stanley M.
Elkins has begun an inquiry into the impact of a slave system in
forming the individual character of the slaves within that
system. In his provocative study, Slavery: A Problem in American
Institutional and Intellectual Life, he has made some interesting
comparisons between the American slave system and the German
concentration camps and has endeavored to account for their
respective impacts on character formation through the social-
psychological theories of personality formation.
In Elkins's thinking, the concentration camps were a modern
example of a rigid system controlling mass behavior. Because some
of those who experienced them were social scientists trained in
the skills of observation and analysis, they provide a basis for
insights into the way in which a particular social system can
influence mass character.
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