Comparative and Global Framing of Enslavement

Comparative and Global Framing of Enslavement, 2023

The study of enslavement has become urgent over the last two decades. Social scientists, legal scholars, human rights activists, and historians, who study forms of enslavement in both modern and historical societies, have soughtand often achievedcommon conceptual grounds to forge a new perspective that englobes historical and contemporary forms of slavery. What could certainly be termed a turn in the study of slavery has also intensified awareness of enslavement as a global phenomenon, inviting a comparative, trans-regional approach across time-space divides. But what does global enslavement mean? Does it mean that enslavement appears in most societies and periods, transcending spatial and temporal boundaries? Is it enough to broaden the range of areas and periods studied to earn the title "global"? Or does global mean that whenever and wherever enslavement existed, it had a universal essence that can be defined in terms and concepts valid for all its occurrences and manifestations? Should the study of global enslavement lead us to an ahistorical/metahistorical view of the subject? Or should we adopt a historical approach, taking into consideration change, diversity, fluidity, and differentiation? In other words, is enslavement constant and applicable to any region or period, an aggregate of various forms, processes, and narratives? Alternatively, are these really "either-or" questions, or can they be reconciled as "both"? These questions, which still occupy contemporary scholarship, gave rise to several theories and models that aim to understand the worldwide institutionalization of enslavement. Societies may share common practices of bondage and enslavement, but also diverge in their definitions of these phenomena. While the ways and means by which such societies acquired and enslaved humans were often relatively similar, the ways enslaved persons were exploited and treated, the ways they negotiated their condition, and the ways out of slavery were often historically different. Nevertheless, both the enslavement of people and their maintenance as enslaved over time always included the use of various degrees of violence. They connect and separate societies in applying economic and political powers and ideologies. The study of forced migration and human trafficking, as well as other features of enslavement, may bring different approaches, closer to the study of enslavement as a global phenomenon. Demand for unfree labor often generated forced migration, with its local and global economic, political, and cultural implications. Gender, origin/ethnicity/race, property, and domination also played a major role in the relationships formed in the framework of enslavement. These were shaped by both the interests of enslavers and the agency of the enslaved, by the political, religious, and legal practices of enslaving societies around the globe throughout history up to the present day.

Comparative and Global Framing of Enslavement, 2023

The study of enslavement has become urgent over the last two decades. Social scientists, legal scholars, human rights activists, and historians, who study forms of enslavement in both modern and historical societies, have soughtand often achievedcommon conceptual grounds to forge a new perspective that englobes historical and contemporary forms of slavery. What could certainly be termed a turn in the study of slavery has also intensified awareness of enslavement as a global phenomenon, inviting a comparative, trans-regional approach across time-space divides. But what does global enslavement mean? Does it mean that enslavement appears in most societies and periods, transcending spatial and temporal boundaries? Is it enough to broaden the range of areas and periods studied to earn the title "global"? Or does global mean that whenever and wherever enslavement existed, it had a universal essence that can be defined in terms and concepts valid for all its occurrences and manifestations? Should the study of global enslavement lead us to an ahistorical/metahistorical view of the subject? Or should we adopt a historical approach, taking into consideration change, diversity, fluidity, and differentiation? In other words, is enslavement constant and applicable to any region or period, an aggregate of various forms, processes, and narratives? Alternatively, are these really "either-or" questions, or can they be reconciled as "both"? These questions, which still occupy contemporary scholarship, gave rise to several theories and models that aim to understand the worldwide institutionalization of enslavement. Societies may share common practices of bondage and enslavement, but also diverge in their definitions of these phenomena. While the ways and means by which such societies acquired and enslaved humans were often relatively similar, the ways enslaved persons were exploited and treated, the ways they negotiated their condition, and the ways out of slavery were often historically different. Nevertheless, both the enslavement of people and their maintenance as enslaved over time always included the use of various degrees of violence. They connect and separate societies in applying economic and political powers and ideologies. The study of forced migration and human trafficking, as well as other features of enslavement, may bring different approaches, closer to the study of enslavement as a global phenomenon. Demand for unfree labor often generated forced migration, with its local and global economic, political, and cultural implications. Gender, origin/ethnicity/race, property, and domination also played a major role in the relationships formed in the framework of enslavement. These were shaped by both the interests of enslavers and the agency of the enslaved, by the political, religious, and legal practices of enslaving societies around the globe throughout history up to the present day.

Statelessness & Citizenship Review

2020

In her third single-authored book, Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement, Jane Anna Gordon, Manchester (UK) born and Chicago raised, of Jewish South African parents, offers readers a thought-provoking, rigorous and wellformulated series of arguments in four chapters, an introduction and a conclusion. Jane Anna Gordon is a Professor of Political Science by training and has university affiliations in American Studies, El Instituto, Global Affairs, Philosophy, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut, at Storrs. Jane was also the president of the Caribbean Philosophical Association from 2014 to 2016. Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement is an articulate, diligently documented, beautifully written, and superbly argued book that proved difficult to put down. It offers readers the much sought after "faces of enslavement", and "degrees of statelessness" that we would all like to know of, as we look back at our past and contemplate the way forward amid the most recent worldwide protests that brought a global face to the state of racism and enslavement still in operation. A large portion of the protests that swept the transatlantic from the Americas to Europe geared their acts of rebellion at toppling statues of colonialists involved in the slave trade, the evidence of which we witnessed from South Africa to the United

Metacide: Genocide in the Pursuit of Excellence, 2010

This is a study of the various forms of contemporary slave-practices, not limited to sexual trafficking. Working from human rights studies, I show how present-day slavery and chattel practices correspond to what J.-F. Lyotard aptly defined as a "differend," which above all consists in the extreme difficulty confronting an injured party or class in bringing its condition to light within the received (juridical or economic) lexicon of the institutions supposed to hear the crime, and thereupon to provide some aid or resolution to the wrong(s) committed.

Springer eBooks, 2023

The chapters of this handbook presented slavery both as a global practice having existed from Old Babylonia to the present day and as an institution with globalizing effects connecting people, places, and commodities, sometimes over great distances. The contributions have shown how people have entered enslavement, been exploited as slaves, and attempted or managed to exit slavery across time and space. At any given time, people have been born into slavery and captured or kidnapped by soldiers, warriors, or pirates. They have been sentenced to slavery or sold themselves into it to escape poverty or debt. In all parts of the world, slaves' bodies and their ability to perform labor have been violently exploited; they have lived in segregation or side by side with other coerced people, and they have served the needs and pleasures of their masters and the respective slaving systems. And throughout history, people have struggled to leave this status of total submission by working and negotiating for their ransom or manumission, or by planning their escape or revolt. Obviously, all these individual and collective stories of enslavement cut across linear narratives tracing slavery from the Graeco-Roman context directly to Atlantic slavery and abolition. Rather than appearing as a human institution following a simple path of gradual evolution and dissolution, slavery proves to be a chameleon, quickly adapting to shifting circumstances and frameworks

2018

This briefing aims to clarify the concept of contemporary forms of slavery and analyse the legal obligations of States, as well as recent international developments at global and EU levels. It highlights the inconsistent application of the concept by global governance actors and discusses the inclusion of various exploitative practices within this conceptual framework. It also examines the prevalence of contemporary forms of slavery and assesses the policy framework for EU external action. The briefing then recommends possible action by the EU, including: promotion of a more consistent definition and use of the concept of contemporary forms of slavery and further clarifications on the relationship with the human trafficking and forced labour frameworks; a role for the EU as catalyst in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Targets in the field of all contemporary forms of slavery; support for standardising methods of data collection globally. Finally, the paper invites the EU to assess the possibility of drafting a new treaty on contemporary forms of slavery, as a way to fill some existing loopholes at the international level.

The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History, 2023

This chapter seeks to clarify the most relevant tensions at stake in the notion of “modern slavery”, considering it less as a discrete set of phenomena than as a controversy around the legitimate modes of perception and representation of various practices of human bondage and exploitation in the global economy. The first section presents the main conceptual steps taken from the abolition of chattel slavery to the umbrella term “modern slavery”; the second section presents an immanent critique of the ongoing classification struggles around “modern slavery”; the third and final section considers the so-called “root causes” and their frameworks.

European Journal of Social Sciences Studies, 2021

Enslavement and exploitation continue today across the globe and the term human trafficking has become a contemporary catch-all phrase to include a variety of abuses. Exploitation under the umbrella of human trafficking is often framed as a new issue in today's discourse, or as an exception to an otherwise innocuous world system of progress, democracy, and global capitalism. However, if we examine the thinking that has undergirded the various phases of slavery and other types of exploitation, we find a diversity of rationalization for the kinds of abuses common in various historical eras and today. This essay explores the writing of key philosophers often associated with the development of democratic society, particularly in Western Europe and North America. The essay connects the thinking that laid the foundation for the global slave trade of the colonial era to the thinking that supports the current systems of neoliberalism and global capitalism. Threads are traced across key philosophical work to illustrate some of the common assumptions made today in western civilization that set the stage for our current predicament of widespread human trafficking. The essay builds upon the argument that the rationalization of the global slave trade in the colonial era are still present, even if latent, in the rationalization of exploitation for global profit-making today.