Slavery and social death
Subtitle: a comparative study
By: Orlando Patterson.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1982
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 511
Subjects: Slavery; Slaves -- Psychology; Slaveholders -- Psychology
Description: 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 sixty-six societies over time. 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. --from publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.