Even though slavery is a state of bondage, it has to do with relations between people. Most scholarly discourses that exist surrounding slavery recognize that bondage leads to a loss of identity as it curtails the ties of the slaves to their heritage. Sociologist Orlando Patterson’s definition of Slavery is applicable here, as he delineates slavery as "…a permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons." Thus, Slavery banned slaves from all formal, legally enforceable ties of “blood,” and from any attachment to groups or localities other than those chosen for them by the master. Slavery at the rudimentary level erased basic factors that defined one’s identities. The slave was always at the mercy of his master and was disposable at any moment in time. Keith Bradley’s definition of slavery further supports this claim as he contends, “By definition slaves were kinless and were permitted no legally sanctioned familial bonds.” Here the slave is socially dead as social ties between slaves are almost non-existent. Slavery radically disrupted kinship relations for the slaves uprooted from their communities. This is clearly the case in the studies of slavery in West Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and Rome, where the slave’s identities were inhibited by systemic means of isolating these individuals from all aspects of heritage, in a manner such as stripping away of their names, distancing them from their families and ancestors, and gendered control of women’s bodies. Restrained interactions of all aspects of the slave’s heritage are at the heart of social death.
Distance:
A necessary pre-requisite to enslavement was the distancing of the slaves from all aspects of their heritage. This often manifest...
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...ey had no claims or responsibilities to their living blood relatives as these enslavement severed as soon as they were taken in bondage. The slave master did not recognize the family as a unit within the slave population. Marriage was taboo, if allowed it was not legal, as a slave cannot own anything outside his master. Natal alienation removed the slave from all social rights making them socially dead.
Bibliography:
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and social death: a comparative study. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Bradley, K. R. Slavery and society at Rome. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Toledano, Ehud R. Slavery and abolition in the Ottoman Middle East. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998.
Klein, Martin. Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998.
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