Slavery and social death : a comparative study / Orlando Patterson.

Author
Patterson, Orlando, 1940- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1982
  • © 1982
Description
xiii, 511 pages : maps ; 25 cm

Availability

Available Online

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks HT871 .P37 1982 Browse related items Request
    Firestone Library - Stacks HT871 .P37 1982 Browse related items Request

      Details

      Subject(s)
      Library of Congress genre(s)
      Summary note
      "This is the first full-scale comparative study of the nature of slavery. In a work of prodigious scholarship and enormous breadth, which draws on the tribal, ancient, premodern, and modern worlds, Orlando Patterson discusses the internal dynamics of slavery in 66 societies over time. These include Greece and Rome, medieval Europe, China, Korea, the Islamic kingdoms, Africa, the Caribbean islands, and the American South. Slavery is shown to be a parasitic relationship between master and slave, invariably entailing the violent domination of a natally alienated, or socially dead, person. The phenomenon of slavery as an institution, the author argues, is a single process of recruitment, incorporation on the margin of society, and eventual manumission or death. Distinctions abound in this work. Beyond the reconceptualization of the basic master-slave relationship and the redefinition of slavery as an institution with universal attributes, Patterson rejects the legalistic Roman concept that places the "slave as property" at the core of the system. Rather, he emphasizes the centrality of sociological, symbolic, and ideological factors interwoven within the slavery system. Along the whole continuum of slavery, the cultural milieu is stressed, as well as political and psychological elements ... Interdisciplinary in its methods, this study employs qualitative and quantitative techniques from all the social sciences to demonstrate the universality of structures and processes in slave systems and to reveal cross-cultural variations in the slave trade and in slavery, in rates of manumission, and in the status of freedmen"--From publisher's website.
      Bibliographic references
      Includes bibliographical references and index.
      Contents
      • I. The internal relations of slavery. 1. The idiom of power
      • 2. Authority, alienation, and social death
      • 3. Honor and degradation
      • 4. Slavery as an institutional process. 4. Enslavement of "free" persons
      • 5. Enslavement by birth
      • 6. The acquisition of slaves
      • 7. The condition of slavery
      • 8. Manumission : its meaning and modes
      • 9. The status of freed persons
      • 10. Patterns of manumission
      • III. The dialectics of slavery. 11. The ultimate slave
      • 12. Slavery as human parasitism.
      ISBN
      • 0674810821
      • 9780674810822
      • 067481083X
      • 9780674810839
      LCCN
      82001072
      OCLC
      8219393
      Statement on language in description
      Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...
      Other views
      Staff view