Concept Of Slavery Research Articles

Esclavitud de por acá, la de ébano y la de los otros, y la historia paralela. Segunda Parte: Años 1825 d.C. - 2006 d.C.

Durante tres siglos y medio, 10 ó 15 millones de negros africanos fueron trasladados forzosamente a América como esclavos. Más de 12 millones de personas son víctimas del trabajo forzoso en el mundo, según un informe de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo. El término "trata" es un eufemismo conveniente que busca eliminar la dimensión ética del concepto implícito en "la trata de esclavos". Un término mucho más apropiado es el de "comercio negrero", pues la palabra "negrero" ha conservado la carga de infamia que implica rebajar al ser humano a la categoría de mercancía. En cualquier caso, ambos términos se nos presentan en el siglo XXI como lejanos, como desprovistos de verdadero significado. Y ese es precisamente el objetivo de esta dimensión gráfica: aproximar a nosotros el concepto de la esclavitud, procurar, en lo posible a través de la fotografía, que adquiera vida la institución de la esclavitud.

Esclavitud de por acá, la de ébano y la de los otros, y la historia paralela. Primera Parte: Años 1000 a. C.—1824 d. C.

Durante tres siglos y medio, 10 ó 15 millones de negros africanos fueron trasladados forzosamente a América como esclavos. Más de 12 millones de personas son víctimas del trabajo forzoso en el mundo, según un informe de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo. El término "trata" es un eufemismo conveniente que busca eliminar la dimensión ética del concepto implícito en "la trata de esclavos". Un término mucho más apropiado es el de "comercio negrero", pues la palabra "negrero" ha conservado la carga de infamia que implica rebajar al ser humano a la categoría de mercancía. En cualquier caso, ambos términos se nos presentan en el siglo XXI como lejanos, como desprovistos de verdadero significado. Y ese es precisamente el objetivo de esta dimensión gráfica: aproximar a nosotros el concepto de la esclavitud, procurar, en lo posible a través de la fotografía, que adquiera vida la institución de la esclavitud.

“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude”: A critical analysis of international slavery agreements and concepts of slavery

No international agreement has been completely effective in reducing slavery. This stems in part from the evolution of slavery agreements and the inclination on the part of the authors of conventions to include other practices as part of the slavery defintion, resulting in a confusion of the practices and definitions of slavery. What has been missing is a classification that is dynamic and yet sufficiently universal to identify slavery no matter how it evolves. We have attempted to build on theories and examples to clarify the identification of slavery by focusing on an irreducible core of three elements. Assessing the presence of all three can then be applied to a variety of social relationships: first, the complete control of one personal by another; second, appropriation of labor power; and third, the enforcement of these conditoins by threats or acts of violence. Many practices identified in international agreements have some but not all of these three aspects; all three are present in traditional forms of slavery, bonded labor, forced prostitution, and sexual slavery. Effective research and legislation against slavery is important, as it affects an estimated 27 million people worldwide, and as slavery is on the increase now that many developing countries are forced to compete for income in a global economy. Finally it is important to remember that slavery, like all social and economic relationships, evolves over time. Any definition that is based on a historical form of slavery will soon lose its power to capture new forms of slavery within its aegis. Our understanding and our definition of slavery must become as dynamic as the phenomenon itself.

Berlin's Two Concepts of Slavery

Thirty years ago, ambitious, doorstopper books on slavery concentrated on the antebellum era; today, they tend to focus on the colonial period. Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone joins Hugh Thomas's The Slave Trade (1997), Robin Blackburn's, The Making of New World Slavery (1997), and Philip D. Morgan's Slave Counterpoint (1998) in a recent spate of books about early slavery. These monographs take up the work pioneered by Winthrop Jordan and David Brion Davis to see how slavery and prejudice toward blacks were embedded in western European and then American culture. The shift away from the nineteenth century is evidence of the maturation of the field, in which origins of the peculiar institution and its global dimensions are of greater interest because they are still less understood than the forms of slavery which were dismantled during and after the Civil War. But this shift toward the early-modern period probably also represents a different generation's examination of slavery. During the era of the civil rights movement, comprehension of the racism that had survived the Civil War seemed to support an ideal of the radical transformation of American society toward racial equality. Now, because that transformation not entirely been achieved, scholars are looking more carefully at the early history of slavery, in order to understand why racial inequality may be so persistent. Berlin opens his book by addressing this concern: Of late, it become fashionable to declare that race is a social construction. The problem, Berlin points out, is that this scholarly contention has won few practical battles. Few people believe it; fewer act on it. The new understanding of race changed behavior little if at all (p. 1). Why have the scales not fallen from our eyes? To trace the tenacity of racism, Berlin's examination of slavery's genesis necessarily also to explain the emergence of racism. He therefore traces two patterns: how slavery came to be equivalent with enslavement of Africans, and how freedom did not guarantee racial equality. Berlin's goal is to demonstrate that, in early North America, slavery was a pervasive and

(K.) Synodinou On the concept of slavery in Euripides. (Dodone, suppl. 7.) Ioannina: The University. 1977. Pp. 135. Price not stated.

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