Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regard to their labor. It predates written records and was practiced in almost every ancient civilization, becoming widespread specifically after the Neolithic Revolution's development of agriculture roughly 11,000 years ago made a surplus, and therefore an incentive to extract others' labor, possible. Orlando Patterson's sociological account, in Slavery and Social Death, defines slavery as one of the most extreme forms of the relation of domination, approaching the limits of total power from the viewpoint of the master, arguing enslaved people characteristically underwent both an external severing of prior identity, such as name changes and branding, and an internal severing from kinship rights and genealogical continuity, a condition he termed social death. The thesis is contested; see the linked open question. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Institution TypeSourced to the subject's own accountStratification system: an extreme, property-based hierarchy of domination in which one person's labor and legal personhood are held as another's possession, distinguished from the caste and class stratification systems already on this atlas by its basis in outright ownership rather than birth-status or wealth alone. 1 Emergence PeriodSourced to the subject's own accountPredates written records; documented in almost every ancient civilization, becoming widespread specifically after the Neolithic Revolution's agricultural surplus made large-scale extraction of others' labor both possible and economically worthwhile, roughly 11,000 years ago. 1 Slavery
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FAQs
Does slavery always mean legal ownership of a person?
The core, chattel form is legal ownership of a person as property, but scholars debate whether that legal category is the right test for identifying slavery across very different societies and time periods.
Slavery in its clearest, chattel form is the ownership of a person as property, especially with respect to their labor, and this is how the institution is most often legally defined. Orlando Patterson's influential social death thesis argues the defining feature is instead an enslaved person's severance from kinship rights and genealogical continuity, a definition that can apply even where a society's own law recognizes no formal category of ownership. Historians including Michael Craton have challenged Patterson's thesis as resting on too little direct testimony from enslaved people themselves; this atlas carries the disagreement as its own open question rather than resolving it.
Connections
Associated With
Both are property-adjacent, hereditary or quasi-hereditary systems of stratification, though caste is not premised on legal ownership of the person the way slavery is.
Source Wikipedia: Slavery
Debt peonage has been documented, including by international bodies, as a practice closely bordering slavery, in which debt is used to compel labor under conditions the debtor cannot practically escape.
Source Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Wikipedia)
Freyre Casa-Grande e Senzala analyzed the plantation household as the formative institution of Brazilian society under slavery.
Spartan helotry is conventionally classified by historians as a distinct institution bordering on slavery, a subjugated agricultural population bound collectively to the state rather than owned individually as chattel.
Source Joseph Déjacque (Wikipedia)
Source Lysander Spooner (Wikipedia)
Patterson Slavery and Social Death offered a comparative theory of slavery as a form of social death across a wide range of world historical societies.
Source Wikipedia: Slavery
Sociologists compare serfdom and slavery as related but distinct systems of unfree labor, distinguished chiefly by the serf's attachment to land rather than status as property outright.
Source Wikipedia: Sidney Mintz
Open Questions
Source Wikipedia: Social Death
Studied By
Source Encyclopedia.com: Angela Davis
Source David Graeber (Wikipedia)
Source Wikipedia: Orlando Patterson
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Slavery
WikipediaIntroduction section
the ownership of a person as property, especially in regard to their labour
History section
Slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures.
- In Category: Institutions and Social Structures
- Associated With: Caste System
View the Source Encyclopedia.com: Angela Davis
Encyclopedia.comStudied By: Angela Davis, Article textQuote, Studied By: Angela Davis, Article text
In her book Are Prisons Obsolete? (2004), Davis argued that prisons are part of a racist criminal justice system, and she showed how the prison-industrial complex was shaped by slavery and its aftermath.
David Graeber (Wikipedia)
WikipediaStudied By: David Graeber, Article textQuote, Studied By: David Graeber, Article text
thesis on magic, slavery, and politics was supervised by Marshall Sahlins and titled The Disastrous Ordeal of 1987: Memory and Violence in Rural Madagascar.
Wikipedia: Orlando Patterson
WikipediaStudied By: Orlando Patterson, Article textQuote, Studied By: Orlando Patterson, Article text
Patterson is best known for his work on the relationship between slavery and social death, which he has worked on extensively and written several books about.
Lysander Spooner (Wikipedia)
Associated With: Lysander Spooner, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Lysander Spooner, Lead section
Spooner's writings include the abolitionist book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery and No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, which opposed treason charges against secessionists.
Joseph Déjacque (Wikipedia)
Associated With: Joseph Déjacque, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Joseph Déjacque, Lead section
He then moved to New Orleans, where he agitated for the abolition of slavery through social revolution, while also publishing essays that criticised Bonapartist figures and defended gender equality.
Wikipedia: Sidney Mintz
WikipediaAssociated With: Sidney Mintz, opening extract, second sentenceQuote, Associated With: Sidney Mintz, opening extract, second sentence
Later expanding his ethnographic research to Haiti and Jamaica, he produced historical and ethnographic studies of slavery and global capitalism, cultural hybridity, Caribbean peasants, and the political economy of food commodities.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lead section
An accomplished scholar of dependency theory noted for his research on slavery and political theory, Cardoso has earned many honors including the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation (2000) and the Kluge Prize from the US Library of Congress (2012).
Open Questions (1 open question)
Does Orlando Patterson's social death thesis, that slavery is defined by an enslaved person's severance from kinship rights and genealogical continuity, accurately capture the lived condition of enslaved people, or did enslaved communities retain meaningful social and kinship ties that the thesis un
Patterson defines slavery as one of the most extreme forms of the relation of domination, approaching the limits of total power from the viewpoint of the master, arguing enslaved people underwent both external markers of severed identity and internal severance from kinship rights and genealogical continuity, social death. Named critics dispute this: V. P. Franklin objected to Patterson's refusal to define slaves as property; Michael Fellman argued Patterson failed to compare enslaved people's treatment to other marginalized groups; and Michael Craton noted the thesis rests on too little primary testimony from enslaved people themselves about their own experience of honor, domination and community.
What would resolve this Michael Craton's own critique names what would help settle this: more primary-source testimony directly from enslaved people, across more societies, about their own experience of kinship, honor and community under slavery, rather than testimony mediated entirely through the institution's own records.
Historical SociologyWikipedia: Social Death
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