A critical reexamination of Orlando Patterson's groundbreaking Slavery and Social Death, On Human Bondage assesses how his theories have stood the test of time and applies them to new case studies. More than 35 years after the publication of Patterson's landmark work, these essays discuss his ideas of social death and natal alienation, as he first presented them and as they have come to be understood today.
The essays bring together exciting new work by a group of esteemed historians of slavery, based on two conferences devoted to understanding the impact of Patterson's cross-cultural work. They provide insights into slave societies around the world and across time, from classical Greece and Rome to modern Brazil and the Caribbean, and from Han China and pre-colonial South Asia to early modern Europe and the New World. The essays delve into a wide range of topics, including the reformation of social identity after slavery, the new historicist approach to slavery, rituals of enslavement and servitude, questions of honor and dishonor, and symbolic imagery of slavery. In addition, a final chapter by Patterson himself responds to the other contributions and advances his own thinking on concepts of property as they relate to slavery; the special connections between women and slavery; and the metaphors of social death and rebirth as dynamic conceptions of slavery and manumission. This collection not only celebrates but also critiques and extends Orlando Patterson's work, a landmark study of slavery that continues to inspire and provoke debate.