The Southern Tradition is a short monograph based on Genovese's Massey Lectures at Harvard.

The basic argument of the book is as follows: Southern Conservatism (a tradition spanning from Antebellum figures like Calhoun, Mason, and Randolph to more recent figures like the Fugitive Poets and Richard Weaver) can provide an historic, legitimate, and often insightful critique of present day global capitalist liberal culture. Genovese seems to be writing to an audience of fellow scholars and fellow leftist, quasi-marxist thinkers who he thinks might have something to learn from traditionalist opponents of "the market qua culture." The reason for enganing in this task and writing to this audience is made clear several times in the text. Due to the unfortunate intermixing of Southern Conservative politics and the viciously racist practices of many Southern Conservatives, mainstream consideration of the arguments and ideology emerging from Southern Conservatives has been minimal. Genovese seems to fear that the baby has been thrown out with the bath-water. That is, because, for example, state rights arguments were invoked in defense of segregation, they've been summarily dismissed because of the bad company they've kept rather than on their own merits. This seems to me to be the correct road to take and I think Genovese does a nice (if perhaps ultimately unsuccessful) job laying out the basic zeitgeist and arguments associated with Southern Conservatism in a way that neither glosses over the warts nor unnecessarily belabors the underlying racism of many of the figures discussed.

The basic insight (which I think is probably correct) of Southern Conservatism is that the market needs to have some kind of moral and cultural foundation that keeps it rooted in and responsible to the communities in which it operates. Whether these foundation are to be some how enacted in legislation or simply inculcated in schools and churches remain undecided. The other basic insight is that man is a fallible creature that cannot be perfected, that the notion of equality cannot be made to fit a species of exceedingly diverse individuals with exceedingly diverse skills and interests, and thus the idea that power should be concentrated into that hands of one or several men in a centralized government is reject while the notion of populist, tyranny of the majority, direct democracy is also rejected. Instead we should look to republicanism as the proper model for government, one which will provide the people with a voice but is inegalitarian enough to filter that voice through representatives that are (hopefully) prudent enough to avoid whims, fads, potentially destructive majoritarian desires.

Overall, this is only a 3 1/2 star book (even though I liked it) because, it seems to me that for anyone with any background in this area the first chapter is simply treading over well worn ground and it goes by too quickly to get below the surface. Further, the third chapter raises interesting questions about "where to go from here" (given the admission that we'll never go back to being yeoman farmers and never fully recapture the traditionalist set of values) but ultimately fails to provide much in the way of an answer. Of course a complete answer would be asking far too much, but Genovese seems to end on a sour note. The Soviet Union collapsed and Southern Conservatism doesn't really provide us with a workable model for a right-wing alternative to global capitalism so the best we can do now is throw up our hands.
I'd have liked a bit more than that.

Anyhow, the real meat of the book is found in the second chapter, where Genovese focuses on the constitutional interpretations and legal arguments the emanated from the Old South in the years preceding the civil war. Lots of this stuff was very interesting and the depth of analysis was sufficient to take me into some unfamiliar territory. Especially nice was the compare and contrast between Yankee traditionalists (like Joseph Story) and their Southern analogs on matters of constitutional interpretation and the like.

Another high-light is that, although I've criticized him for throwing up his hands at the end, Genovese, in true conservative fashion, is not particularly optimistic about the prospects for a traditionalist "revolution." Furthermore, he is able to present a faithful and generous rendering of the Southern Conservative view point without having to apply all the gloss that straight forward ADVOCATES of the view often resort to. His outsider status seems to allow him to look at the view with clear eyes and point to its failings without reservation. Southern Conservatism is kind of a niche market in the academic world; thus there are really not very many works like this one because, unsurprisingly, most folks writing ABOUT the view are proponents of it. Genovese provides a nice change of pace, although one suspects that he'll never be able to convince most of our leftist colleagues that the Southern Tradition has anything to offer the world (beyond Jim Crow and SEC football) no matter how carefully he siphons out the racialist element.

Final note: the book is clearly written and easy to read. I was able to get through it in a day. ( )