Reconfiguring Slavery
：West African Trajectories
( Liverpool Studies in International Slavery )
Publication subTitle ：West African Trajectories
Publication series ：Liverpool Studies in International Slavery
Publisher： Liverpool University Press
Publication year： 2016
E-ISBN: 9781846315640
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9781846311994
Subject： C91 Sociology
Language：
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Description
Reconfiguring Slavery focuses on the range of trajectories followed by slavery as an institution since the various abolitions of the nineteenth century. It also considers the continuing and multi-faceted strategies that descendants of both owners and slaves have developed to make what use they can of their forebears’ social positions, or to distance themselves from them. Reconfiguring Slavery contains both anthropological and historical contributions that present new empirical evidence on contemporary manifestations of slavery and related phenomena in Mauritania, Benin, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and the Gambia. As a whole, the volume advances a renewed conceptual framework for understanding slavery in West Africa today: instead of retracing the end of West African slavery, this work highlights the preliminary contours of its recent reconfigurations.
Contents
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Preface
A note on Language
1. Introduction: Rethinking Slavery in West Africa - Benedetta Rossi
2. Slave descent and Social Status in Sahara and Sudan - Martin A. Klein
3. African American psychologists, the atlantic Slave trade and Ghana: a History of the present - Tom McCaskie
4. After abolition: Metaphors of Slavery in the political History of the Gambia - Alice Bellagamba
5. Islamic patronage and republican emancipation: The Slaves of the Almaami in the Senegal river valley - Jean Schmitz
6. Curse and Blessing: on post-slavery Modes of perception and agency in Benin - Christine Hardung
7. Contemporary trajectories of Slavery in Haalpulaar Society (Mauritania) - Olivier Leservoisier
8. Slavery and politics: Stigma, decentralisation and political representation in Niger and Benin - Eric Komlavi Hahonou
9. Slavery and Migration: Social and physical Mobility in ader (Niger) - Benedetta Rossi
10. Discourses on Slavery: reflections on forty years of research - Philip Burnham
Glossary of Foreign Words
Index
In Benedetta Rossi’s Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories, “trajectories” reconfiguring slavery refers to the ways in which traditional forms of slavery have left their imprint on the present and does not include completely new forms of subjugation, exploitation, or enslavement, such as child labor, prostitution, elite capture, or international domination by states or corporations. This stimulating collection for West African scholars provides an abundance of examples of the transformations in traditional forms of slavery covering the range of possibilities, from formerly subjugated groups that now have the upper hand over their former masters to situations where traditional forms of symbolic and financial domination still prevail. Rossi defines the book’s focus as categorical slavery in contradistinction to metaphorical slavery, the latter being the extension of the general idea of a hierarchical and exploitative relation to other situations lacking any historical roots in traditional categories of master and slave. Nevertheless, one chapter (by Alice Bellagamba) provides an interesting look at modern metaphors of slavery (e.g., a discourse on civil servants as slaves in the Gambia) and another (by Tom McCaskie) deals with African American claims to pan-African cultural ties to the Egyptian concept of Maat. Reconfiguring Slavery has an introduction and chapter by Rossi, as well as chapters by eight other authors: Martin A. Klein, McCaskie, Bellagamba, Jean Schmitz, Christine Hardung, Olivier Leservoisie
Chapter