Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, With a New Preface

by Orlando Patterson

This is the first full-scale comparative study of the nature of slavery. In a work of prodigious scholarship and enormous breadth, which draws on the tribal, ancient, premodern, and modern worlds, Orlando Patterson discusses the internal dynamics of slavery in 66 societies over time. These include Greece and Rome, medieval Europe, China, Korea, the Islamic kingdoms, Africa, the Caribbean islands, and the American South. Slavery is shown to be a parasitic relationship between master and slave, invariably entailing the violent domination of a natally alienated, or socially dead, person. The phenomenon of slavery as an institution, the author argues, is a single process of recruitment, incorporation on the margin of society, and eventual manumission or death.

Distinctions abound in this work. Beyond the reconceptualization of the basic master–slave relationship and the redefinition of slavery as an institution with universal attributes, Patterson rejects the legalistic Roman concept that places the “slave as property” at the core of the system. Rather, he emphasizes the centrality of sociological, symbolic, and ideological factors interwoven within the slavery system. Along the whole continuum of slavery, the cultural milieu is stressed, as well as political and psychological elements. Materialistic and racial factors are deemphasized. The author is thus able, for example, to deal with “elite” slaves, or even eunuchs, in the same framework of understanding as fieldhands; to uncover previously hidden principles of inheritance of slave and free status; and to show the tight relationship between slavery and freedom.

Interdisciplinary in its methods, this study employs qualitative and quantitative techniques from all the social sciences to demonstrate the universality of structures and processes in slave systems and to reveal cross-cultural variations in the slave trade and in slavery, in rates of manumission, and in the status of freedmen. Slavery and Social Death lays out a vast new corpus of research that underpins an original and provocative thesis.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sociology, Race, Anthropology, Politics, Philosophy

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University; the author of Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and Slavery and Social Death; and the editor of The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, for which he was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. His work has been honored by the American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association, among others, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as Special Advisor for Social Policy and Development to Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Government of Jamaica.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whilst I realise the book has a morbid title, it's still incredible. The empirical evidence and anecdotes span all known human history and societies, and serve to show not only how shitty humans can be, but also how well Patterson's thesis fits the facts. The most enjoyable part for me has been his analysis of these facts, especially with regard to power, domination, and exploitation. He ultimately finishes the book with an elegant dialectic, exposing slavery as human parasitism. I probably only caught the significance of about 70% of Patterson's intended messages but here's what I got:

Power consists of three facets: social (threat + violence), psychological (persuasion), and institutional (authority + culture).

Patterson's main thesis is that slavery is not satisfactorily defined as a relation of property, but rather by the concept of social death. Tied up with this is the observation that slaves were often an economic burden, and were not always held purely for profit. Slavery is defined as social death, social death roughly defined as follows: "slavery is the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons". It is a "relation of domination", and as such is composed of the three facets of power.

The social component is obvious, slaves were violently treated and often their servitude was a substitution for death, as a criminal or as a conquered enemy. They had no power and what power they had was surrogate through their master.

The institutional aspect is that of natal alienation, the slave was a "genealogical isolate", "denied all claims on...his living blood relations...remote ancestors...and on his descendants." "the loss of ties of birth in both ascending and descending generations". He had a past, but no social heritage. Note that he had social ties, but rather that these were not seen as legitimate, and were denied by the 'living' society of the master. The denial was in the form of the power, or rather the threat, the master had to remove slaves from their family and surrounding ties at a whim. This, unsurprisingly, has an permanent impact on the slaves. If a slave was taken away form his society/city/culture and into that of the master, this (intrusive) alienation also resulted in the "loss of native status." They existed socially only through their master, and so existed liminally.

The final sociopsychological aspect is dishonor. Slaves were not dishonorable, they were dis-honored. "He could have no honor because he had no power and no independent social existence, hence no public worth. He had no name of his own to defend." Honor or dignity is a primary human value "the idea that a person's honor is more valuable than his life, and that to prefer life to honor betrays a degraded mind, comes close to being a genuinely universal belief". The slave's loss of honor was matched by the masters enhancement of his own honor with his new show of power. "The dishonor the slave was compelled to experience sprang instead from that raw, human sense of debasement inherent in having no being except as an expression of another's being". This experience is not completely internalised by the slave, indeed "dignity, like love, is one of those human qualities that are most intensely felt and understood when they are absent - or unrequited." This dignity, profound in personal accounts of slaves, played part in a struggle between master and slave to deny them this, and it was the promise of potential manumission that was used as "an essential precondition" for slavery.

Evidence for these elements is plentiful, for example the ritual of enslavement often included renaming, and a symbolic rejection of past ties. When slaves were manumitted (freed) postmortem in some tribes they were seen as having been touched by death, as "the master's spirit resurrected in the living person of his favourite surrogate." Possible only as the slave lacked a symbolic life of his own.

Why were slaves manumitted postmortem and not passed on? It allowed the master to leave with a good conscience and provided good-will in the afterlife.

Symbolically slaves served a purpose in society to delineate boundaries "the master, in his turn, learned from the role reversal not compassion for his slave, but the bliss it was to be free and Greek".

He talks about Christianity having been most popular among slaves of the Roman Empire due to its promise of redemption. Symbolically Christ's crucifixion had two interpretations, it promised spiritual freedom which was really re-enslavement to a new master (God), so one was not truly free. The more liberating interpretation is that Christ's death represented the physical death of the slave (slavery often being the alternative for death) and so removed the initial cause of enslavement, and as such the slave was free. The slave then gets a family as well, in God. Most interestingly, it is this dual nature of Christianity, "Christ the Messiah King and Jesus as comforting savior" which allowed christianity to prevail and simultaneously sustain both the master and slave in the American South. As Patterson says: "The religion that had begun in and was fashioned by the Roman slave order was to play the identical role eighteen hundred years later in the slave system that was to be Rome's closest cultural counterpart in the modern world. History did not repeat itself; it merely lingered".

Kidnapping (incursions with the sole purpose of gathering slaves, not war), and birth were the two most common forms of enslavement.

Manumussion

Women were more likely to be manumitted because they spent more time in the household than out working, and because they had less economic independence and so were more likely to stay as workers once freed.

Manumission was often symbolically a rebirth (following a social death), heads were shaven for example. The manumitted symbolically also often received weapons to represent gaining power. "The acquisition of the capacity to compete for honor (represented in the German case in the passing of the individual from one freeman to another or in the ritual of stepping in the same shoes), the attainment of will and autonomy (represented by the crossroad)".
Manumission was perceived as a gift, one for which the slave must be grateful. The debt generated by the gift was paid off by a continued repayment in the form of service (but not servitude).

The factors impacting manumission had relatively little to do with race or religion, however how the freedmen were treated did depend on it.

Manumission occurred more often in urban society, as slaves who had desirable unique skills had more control over the relationship and could potentially collect more earnings (peculium) "Masters were so eager to motivate their slaves that they entered into a semicontractual obligation in which manumission was guaranteed after the completion of a defined amount of production". Control over earnings and independence were also crucial factors.

"Where there is a relative scarcity of capital, the master finds it more profitable to permit his slave to buy his freedom earlier in return for more intensive and productive work during his period of slavery; where capital is abundant, there is no such incentive to the master."

"The greater the frequency of such shocks, the higher the rate of manumission" both economic and military shocks.

The following quote is a rough summary of the whole book:
"Enslavement was separation (or symbolic execution), slavery was a liminal state of social death, and manumission was symbolic rebirth. Accompanying this cultural process in the internal relations of slavery is an ideological dialectic. The master gives the slave physical life either directly (if he was the original enslaver) or indirectly (if he purchased or inherited hum, in return for which the slave under obligation to reciprocate with total obedience and service. In the act of repaying his debt, the slave loses social life. This loss, however, is not part of the repayment to the master, it is rather one of the terms of the transaction-the exchange of physical life for total obedience. With manumission the master makes another gift to the slave, this time the gift of social life, which is ideologically interpreted as a repayment for faithful service...the ex-slave now comes under another obligation....which he repays by faithful dependence...meant as a signal of gratitude to the master for the gift of freedom. As such, it is the initiation of a new dialectic of domination and dependence"

Freedmen

Why was the U.S. South particularly cruel to the freedmen? Partly because there was no "cultural disdain for skilled labor" and the working-class immigrants did not appreciate the lowering of status of their crafts by "their association with slaves or freed blacks". Additionally, it was "the absence of a formal wala (post manumission patron) relationship". This was partly due to manumission not being a mode of motivation in the slaveholding South, rather punishment. However, it was also due to the master's unwillingness to accept any infringements on their "purity" (particularly strong in the South due to the fundamentalist religious values) as a result of previous or continued interactions with the slaves.

Ultimate Slaves

Could elite slaves truly be considered slaves? The familiar Caesaris, or palatine eunuchs etc? Yes, they acted as surrogates of the emperor himself, they lacked honor and so could perform both important and 'dirty' jobs without complaint. Why eunuchs? Because they were ultimately liminal. They were true genealogical isolates as they could have no children. Rulers seek three things: to prevent alliances against them "such as the major bureaucratic and the aristocratic groups, second is to "develop an efficient bureaucracy" and the third to prevent the "growth of an autonomous, self-perpetuating bureaucracy." Eunuchs serve to solve all three problems, they were permanently excluded from other alliances, they had strong group moral, and could not become self-perpetuating. Eunuchs served to mediate dual roles as messengers from the holy or divine emperor, being seen as pure of body, to dirty Earthly subjects (they were despised and seen as dirty). "The eunuch in his ambiguity both affirmed and displaced the mortal reality of the emperor and his ruthlessness. He provided a way of acknowledging and overcoming the opposition between life and death, sacred and profane, good and evil"

Human Parasitism

What about the dilemma that in enhancing one’s power through slaves, one becomes dependent on them and thus loses power? Here we come to slavery as human parasitism. Parasitism exists on a continuum, "ranging from minor dependence or exploitation to major "Hegelian" dependence on the part of the dominator and grave survival risks for the dominated." "The systemic parasitism of the slaveholder's culture and society naturally reinforces the direct personal parasitism of the slaveholder on his slave. In this sense the slave may be said to suffer both personal and institutional parasitism." "To all members of the community the slave existed only through the parasite holder, who was called the master. On this intersubjective level the slaveholder fed on the slave to gain the very direct satisfactions of power over another, honor enhancement, and authority. The slave, losing in the process all claim to autonomous power, was degraded and reduced to a state of liminality."

The second edition has a preface in which Patterson addresses several criticisms (which mostly seem to be a result of people not having read his book.) Most interestingly to me was the comparison of social death with the "five core social motives that are essential for psychological and social functioning" as outlined by Susan Fiske. These are roughly: belonging; a need to understand the environment to help predict; a need to have a sense of control over outcomes; a need to view oneselves "as worthy or improvable"; and finally the "need to trust". As Patterson shows "the social death of slavery was a prolonged assault on every one of these elementary human needs". Effects which continue on to today.

[counter-hegemonicon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly gargantuan, quantitative work detailing slavery across every major society. Patterson’s research is piercingly insightful and has generated an incredible amount of work in anthropology, history, CRT, and many other fields. We’re all deeply indebted to those able to stare so deeply into the abyss, though it’s not as an entirely heavy of a read as I thought based on the title

[Eve Tushnet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just a cross-cultural study of the economics and demographics of slavery but of slavery's symbolic alphabet: the metaphysics of slavery, the various things slaveholders thought they were doing (or said they were doing) when they enslaved people, and how these various metaphysics informed their overall understanding of death, family, property and more. Patterson balances cross-cultural similarities and differences; he explores societies which practice slavery vs. societies whose economic and social structures depended on it; and he doesn't let the gravitational pull of the vast slave empires like Rome and the transatlantic trade distort his analysis of smaller-scale enslavement.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a work of sociology foremost, with anthropological and historical aspects secondary. Patterson, whose area of expertise is slavery in the Caribbean, looks at all slave societies over time to find out what every slave had in common - and every master. (The book is as much about masters as slaves, and Patterson engages Hegel's master-slave dialectic and the notion of "parasitism" to explain the relationship between them.) Aspects of slavery such as race and gender are discussed, but not front and center. Ditto for slavery in the American South, which is just another slave society.

I learned much. Did you know the eunuch is the "ultimate slave?" Slaves in the Roman Empire could rise to the highest administrative positions. I hadn't known slavery was so widespread in Russia (you always think of the serf). Slaves were treated most cruelly on plantations that had absentee owners, and the place where this was most common was the British and French Caribbean.

The Caribbean was also the place where the percentage of slaves relative to the overall population was highest. Depending on the location and the decade, slaves comprised 60-90% or even more of Caribbean slave societies. In the American South, slaves averaged about one-third of the total population over time.

Manumission (the freeing of slaves) varied widely throughout slave societies. According to Patterson, the rate of manumission in the American South was, by far, the lowest of any slave society. Whenever the economic value of the slave was highest, manumission rates were low. What caused the economic value of an American slave to rise? The end of the slave trade to the U.S. meant that the slave population could only grow through reproduction. The rise of cotton as a crop increased the demand for slaves, and thus their value.

Seven southern states required freed slaves to leave the state. The main reason for this, says Patterson, is that freedmen provided a visual incentive for slaves that the slaveowners didn't want to provide. Owners didn't want slaves to aspire to freedom; they wanted slaves to be happy as slaves.

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was foundational in my understanding of the depth of the debt that is owed black people. Until this book I didn't fully understand the magnitude of the physical, spiritual, psychological, social, and civic damage that was borne of slavery and continues on through the various agents of global capital (police, jailer, employer, case worker). It is not something that can merely be overlooked or gotten over. As we continue to grasp how deep this all goes, we will continue to understand how deep we will have to dig if we truly wish to uproot it.

[Tolliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather than focussing on slavery as an economic system, Orlando Patterson, in Slavery and Social Death, looks instead at slavery in terms of socio-political relationships and power dynamics in human societies. He opens with the statement that ‘all human relationships are structured and defined by the relative power of the interacting persons.’ He compares dozens of slave-holding societies across time and space to define slavery as ‘one of the most extreme forms of the relation of domination, approaching the limits of total power from the viewpoint of the master, and of total powerlessness from the viewpoint of the slave.’ Patterson uses Marxist theory, statistical and quantitative analysis, and historical research to compare the institution of slavey from the ancient Mediterranean, medieval, colonial, and postcolonial periods. Regardless of the specific historical context, Patterson states, slavery was at a fundamental level a relation of domination. One of the first critics of the Nieboer-Domar land:labour ratio hypothesis, Patterson went on to argue that slavery was not primarily an economic system, but is instead defined by three kinds of relationships of oppression that, together, constituted a ‘social death’ which then allow the slave’s labour or services to be employed in a new system of control. The first condition is that the subjugation of slaves is underpinned by violence, and the ability of their owners to physically coerce them. Secondly, slavery involves ‘natal alienation’, i.e. a complete removal of family and community ties, leaving them without any form of legal or social protection or the ability to inherit or pass on rights or property. Finally, slaves are considered socially debased (‘dishonoured’), whereas their owners are seen as social elites; (‘honourable’).

Patterson’s definition of slavery is useful because it distinguishes between slavery and other forms of ‘unfree’ labour: indentured labourers, pawns, debt servants, or other ‘servile’ groups, for example, did not experience ‘natal alienation’. In medieval Europe, pawns were offered by their families as surety for loans, but were able to rely on their family connections to ensure their safety during the loan period and would be returned to their former lives after the loan was paid off. Indentured servants in early modern Europe and its colonies were protected, at least in theory, by contracts which fixed the terms of their employment, and therefore had access to legal protection.

While Patterson’s work was initially well-received, and ‘social death’ was widely used to explain the nature of slavery as an institution, later historians were concerned that ‘social death’ as a concept was being too broadly applied, and did not do justice to records of lived experiences of slavery. In terms of a slave’s legal status, ‘social death’ seems appropriate: slaves no longer could claim protection under the law. But, some historians argued, we have many historical accounts of slavery that suggest that it was impossible to completely strip people of older cultural and social identities.

Patterson’s idea is valuable because it explains the social logic behind slavery as an institution, but it also provides a cautionary tale about the use of ‘all-encompassing’ theories to explain historical processes. Frederick Cooper, an historian of colonial and postcolonial Africa, suggests in Colonialism in Question that the problem with ‘social death’ was that it described the slaveholder’s ideal of how slavery worked, rather than the historical experience of slavery. Cooper argues that ‘social death’ ignored the agency of the slaves themselves, both to resist the new systems of control imposed upon them and to preserve earlier social identities and relationships. Other historians have seen ‘social death’ as a way to understand the process of ‘commodification’, of transforming people into property, in a way that does not suggest that slaves were somehow responsible for their own enslaved condition.

In earlier histories of slavery, there was a tendency to view slaves themselves as entirely passive, unable to effectively resist or influence the slave system. As David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman note, ‘slavery is generally regarded as the most extreme form of dependency and exploitation’. Yet many historians of slavery have established that resistance and rebellion among enslaved populations developed simultaneously with the trade itself; in other words, the agency of individual slaves and organised groups of slave rebels shaped the nature of slavery from the very beginning of the trade and slave systems. Debates about the extent to which enslaved people were able to influence the course of events or alter their own circumstances created a historiographic debate about the nature of slavery itself. Some historians have argued that denying slaves agency undermined a historical record of resistance, individual achievement, and the ‘survival’ or ‘retention’ of West African culture in the New World; others argued that it is equally important to emphasise the dehumanising, brutal aspects of slavery which often suppressed and destroyed such resistance or cultural continuities.

Slave labour, alongside other forms of coerced or unfree labour, has underpinned economic production from the ancient world through to the modern era, just as various forms of ‘unfreedom’ have structured human societies and polities during the same period. Often, the societies that relied on slave systems perceived them as crucial and ubiquitous to socio-economic life. Thus, while we think of slavery today as a strange aberration, for much of human history, as David Eltis notes, it was wage labour that was the ‘odd institution.’ Orlando Patterson's haunting argument is that our contemporary understanding of ‘freedom’ is, in fact, entirely dependent on the institution of slavery.

[miri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patterson defines "social death" as a social fact which is the combination of natal alienation, dishonor, and naked violence. If it is true that he spends quite some time delving into the specifics of these components, what I think makes this a fascinating read is how he anticipated the counterarguments and contradictions of his own thesis. Patterson is so methodical–he used the data of a 1969 anthropological study to go about his exploration of slavery in the pre-capitalist society. How did I find myself reading about the condition of slavery during the Third Dynasty in Ur on a Tuesday night? I don't know, but I know that Patterson does not like speculation, but prefers instead to streamline slavery's internal logic to highlight its weaknesses. Mainly, he relies on legal systems and language to make sure that we don't reduce the entire history of slavery to the word "property" and/or "labor." Adding to that, he is especially cautious of making sure we don't use generalizing statements like "slaves did not have legal personhood" because, he argues, they existed in a formalized marginality, a liminal incorporation to society in which a non-place was a place. From the start, Hegel's dialectic is featured to pinpoint how this relationship of total domination ends up binding BOTH sides! I especially appreciated the chapters on the rituals of slavery, the freedmen, and the ending, where we are invited to reflect on possibly the ultimate dialectic–slavery is the absence of freedom, and there might be no freedom without slavery. Another really fascinating point was how he tried to make the case as to why, out of all the relationships of domination (marriage, ha) slavery is so particular. (Hint: because it is nonconsensual, and the Only alternative to Death.)
I want to say that I read this with a group of people that offered great insight and criticism. What rubs the readers the wrong way? Mainly that in his mechanical madness and obsession, one could argue that he is saying that social death meant the complete loss of agency, severely overlooking the many ways of resistance (the everyday ones, like Hartman would say, as well as marronage) and label this an extremely pessimistic approach. I disagree. I think, if anything, he spends 500 pages making us think that is the pit where the book will land, only to let us know that in spite of That, human nature is to remain dreaming of freedom. Feel free to disagree. This is a Must-read though.

[Robert Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Slavery and Social Death” is a book by a sociologist for sociologists. While there is, of course, nothing wrong with this, it does suggest that a warning may be in order for mere mortals who pick the book up seeking insight or enlightenment. Dr. Patterson first defines slavery and then, with a scientist’s thoroughness, surveys examples of slave societies throughout the world and across history to flesh out the details of his own definition. One of the themes of the book is that to understand slavery, one must not only understand what it was to be a slave, but also, to understand how slaves were acquired and, most importantly, how and over what period of time slaves were ultimately freed and repatriated (absorbed as true social equals). Seen thus, slavery is less a state of being than it is a process through which the actual period of formal enslavement was only one element. What becomes abundantly clear as a result of his approach is that while slavery has taken many forms over the course of human history, its core features - the elements of human behavior and social interaction that make a thing “slavery” - are always the same. In making this clear, Patterson provides a cogent framework for analysis, and so does the reader a great service.

The problem with this holistic approach, however, is that while the book does a great job of separating the essence of slavery from the attendant cultural, religious, geographic and economic conditions present in the particular society where it happens to have existed, the universality of Patterson’s approach makes reading the book frustrating for anyone interested in gaining insights concerning possibilities for current public policy. As an American I live in a country where slavery has played a profound role not only in my nation’s history, but in the social, political and economic realities of the present. What I would like to know is what the history of other slave societies have to tell us about the social, political and economic outlook for America’s future, and the extent to which these might be favorably influenced. He makes a compelling case, for example, that a fundamental aspect of slavery was the imposition of a state of “dishonor” on the victim, but his dive into the means by which that state of dishonor was removed when slavery ended is thin and a discussion of how that process might be accelerated by proactive public engagement is absent. While Patterson’s book gives many tantalizing hints, it offers no concrete answers.

Still, it is unfair to bemoan the book I wish he’d written at the expense of the book he did write. There is most definitely gold between the book's covers, and although it requires a certain amount of dedication to read, the profound insights his work suggest makes the effort worth while pursuing. Notwithstanding the book's deficits, it gets five stars for the significance of the insights it has to offer and the thoroughness with which they are presented.

[Leo Mugo · Rating 5 out of 5]

”The first men and women to struggle for freedom, the first to think of themselves as free in the only meaningful sense of the term, were freedmen. And without slavery there would have been no freedmen.”- Orlando Patterson

Slavery and Social Death is probably the most important and informative book about the nature of slavery. Be warned that it is a complex and dense sociological book but it is worth the read. Patterson tackles enslavement, slavery, manumission, structures of power and the elements of slavery. First and foremost, Patterson states that slavery was practiced on all continents of the world from the most primitive to the most advanced human societies. Secondly, slavery was particularly rooted in an us vs them mentality. Slaveholding societies would enslave people from different nations, classes, religions, tribes and races depending on the context. Thirdly, slavery was practiced for different purposes. It could be for economic, social, symbolic, ritualistic or administrative reasons. Just like the previous point, it would depend on the context. Lastly, our understanding of freedom grew out of our experiences with slavery.

Patterson approaches the institution of slavery from an unconventional and distinct perspective. He states that modern society has been seeing slavery from a legal and economic standpoint rather than a social one and this is where our misunderstanding of slavery begins. Since slavery involved humans then it was only fair to analyze it from a social perspective so that the complete structure of slavery could be understood. He continues by saying that slavery wasn’t about ownership or property but rather about domination.

Patterson described slavery as the “violent and permanent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons”. This leads us to the three elements of slavery that he talks about in the book which are: violence, natal alienation and dishonor. These elements formed a ‘social death’ which was consistently present in the institution of slavery across all slaveholding societies. ‘Social Death’ is what separated slavery from other social institutions.

Slaves were considered “dead” to society which would imply that they didn’t have a social standing, identity and autonomy. Violence was not to only used to inflict physical pain on the slave but to also remind the slave at a psychological level that they didn’t have any rights or protection within society. Slaves were also estranged from their familial and ancestral ties including any privileges that came with such relationships. Lastly, slaves were dishonored. They were perceived as nobodies and were excluded from communal belonging and denied participation in social or cultural life. These elements were sanctioned through symbols and rituals.

As much as humanity grappled with the long history of slavery, Patterson reveals how slaves, people you’d expect to be depressed and hopeless in their long life bondage, found meaning and hope in their lives. Slaves valued their relationships because they understood that they could be separated from their loved ones arbitrarily. Religion and communal worship allowed slaves to overcome their struggles and find peace in their enslavement and finally, the denial of human dignity and freedom motivated the slave to work towards securing, hopefully, their manumission down the line if the opportunity ever presented itself.

The concept of manumission was more complex than one might expect. People were freed from slavery due to various reasons. Some were freed once their masters died or when their master ordered them to be released in his posthumous will. Others were freed if they defended the state during war or if they paid their masters a price for their freedom. However, just because you were manumitted doesn’t mean you would be treated equally to a freeborn citizen. The stigma of your slave past or that of your ancestors persisted long after manumission and this would lead to your isolation as a freeman and that of your descendants. You can clearly see this pattern in the Americas even today.

Patterson’s thesis is currently relevant when we discuss the controversial topic of slavery. Instead of dismantling the symbolic and psychological structures of domination and exploitation, we are caught up with discussing how we can monetarily compensate descendants of slaves or what apology should be given. Slavery seemed to have ended through its abolition but it metamorphosed into our current socioeconomic system where violence, natal alienation and dishonor are still present. The only difference is that the elements of slavery are not exercised in the public domain like before but rather through symbols such as capital, wealth, commodities and labor.

At the end of the book, Patterson talks about how the limitations of language can either be overwhelming or underwhelming in describing a peculiar construct such as the institution of slavery. Even though he said that slavery was rooted in domination rather than ownership at the beginning of the book, his understanding of the nature of slavery changes towards the end. He says domination is an understatement when it comes to describing the relationship between master and slave. He actually describes the institution of slavery as a form of ‘human parasitism’.

What did he mean by ‘human parasitism’? You see, when you use the word domination, you imply that one party has unrestricted control over the other, their power is independent and the weaker party depends on the dominant party. Slavery is nothing close to this. Patterson describes slavery through the biological nature of parasites. He compares the master to a parasite and the slave to a host. The master attaches themselves to the slave and they feed on the humanity of the slave so that they can reinforce and expand their power, status and honor. As much as the master is exploiting the slave, he doesn’t realize that he depends on the slave. The moment the relationship between the master and the slave collapses due to the master’s exploitation, the master will be left with a power vacuum that will make him confront the fact that the unrestrained power and authority that he had over the slave was just a mere illusion created through manipulation and violence.

To conclude, slavery wasn’t just the physical and violent domination of somebody but also the symbolic and psychological destruction of one’s social identity. No matter how many rites, laws and symbols were used to dehumanize the enslaved and introduce them to the liminal stage of slavery where they didn’t get the recognition or dignity from society, that didn’t change the natural fact that the slave was a human being. That’s why from its inception, slavery was always a contradictory, paradoxical and dishonest institution that was bound to collapse.

[Circa24 Circa24 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author, Orlando Patterson, explores enslavement across time and cultures in his search for commonalities and differences in how and why cultures enslave. From ancient Greece, Rome, and China to the current forms of enslavement, one condition unites the systems: dehumanization and loss of personhood.

Science typically explores phenomena at two levels: the how (proximate causes) and the why (ultimate reasons). Although the hows are explored, Patterson's focus on the ultimate or "Why?" questions is what makes this 1982 book an academic page-turner. Although economic benefits are found in many systems, they are not universal; some societies have kept slaves not for the labor they could provide but as status symbols that elevate the owners or to create a caste that will occupy the lowest social rung, thus elevating those society members that would otherwise hold that position.

The "how" aspect of slavery builds upon the "why," with the conditions of enslavement being designed as a systematic method of depriving the individual of their humanity and social connections through isolation and domination.

If you are interested in why we treat our fellow humans with disdain or how the impacts of enslavement can have transgenerational effects, then I recommend this book as a must-read.

[Thomas Pope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to articulate if I fully agree, or vehemently disagree with everything Patterson is saying in this book. But this is a fully formed thesis if I’ve ever seen one - and even in disagreeing with him the application of this theory is widespread.

Subsequent afropessimist and genocide theory makes a lot of sense in light of this.

I need to read this again.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is dense, but Patterson’s investigative analysis of slavery on a global, historical scale, contains highly relevant data for any scholar rooted in African American studies or post-colonialism. Patterson’s idea of slavery as social death anticipates Muñoz’s work on dead citizenship in Cruising Utopia and Lauren Berlant’s work on citizenship in Anatomy of National Fantasy. Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic is core to the philosophical aspect of Patterson’s analysis, with the third section of Slavery and Social Death dedicated to expanding Hegel’s dialectic through historical data. In a sense, Patterson re-embodies the dialectic (that is- Patterson makes the dialectic have an embodied presence whose embodiment stems from Patterson adapting Hegel’s somewhat abstract philosophical theory and revising it according to the lived experiences of enslaved persons across cultures, epochs, and continents). This is a useful book, but I do not think I would ever pick it up as a “pleasure read,” as I often do with academic texts.

[David Montgomery · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating anthropological, philosophical, and historical (in roughly that order) exploration of slavery. Patterson notes how nothing could be less accurate than the American euphemism of "the peculiar institution" because there is nothing "notably peculiar" about slavery — "It has existed from before the dawn of human history right down to the twentieth century, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized." Using examples including tribal societies of Africa and North America, ancient empires such as Athens, Rome, and China, and modern advanced slave societies like the American South, Patterson lays out the different ways that slavery has been integrated into societies — how slaves were acquired, used, and (sometimes) freed. Full of delightful prose, too. Not the easiest read, but if you like dense, quasi-academic nonfiction and are interested in the topic you won't do better.

[Marijo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was sort of a re-read for me. I had already read the 2022 edition of this book and decided to go back to the 1982 edition for comparisons. Dr. Peterson's sociological investigation of enslavement crosses time and cultures, from the Shoah and modern enslavements to the United States's chattel and peonage systems and back through ancient Rome, Asia, and the Middle East. Unlike many authors who focus just on the cruelty of the system, Dr. Peterson looks for the patterns of enslavement and the societal functions that perpetuate this ancient curse. Although labor is a massive part of most systems, its functions go beyond just energy. He shows how the dehumanization of others can provide outlets for societal members or provide a bottom tier that ensures all "socially alive" members have someone below them.

For anyone interested in the functions of cruelty or enslavement, or the history of enslavement, I would consider this book a must-read.

[Ece · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it is a good book to read as it is very informative, we can argue that his descriptions of slave societies and societies with slaves and his labeling of slave societies, is lacking. He does not acknowledge that plantations are not a normal structure of society and when we look at colonies/ plantations, the country that has the colonies would be the slave society. Moreover while it is an valuable book for slavery studies with terminology like natal alienation that describes the assimilation process that enslaved went through quite well, the social dead is a problematic explanation as enslaved people sometimes did exist with the socio-cultural and legal structure of the enslavers` societies.

[Pedro Antônio · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a great work (pretty much a social history on slavery across many societies), and it has made me look into so many other great books! Its vocabulary is quite accessible even though English is not my native language, so I guess the understanding of this book is determined by paying close attention to its length; it is worth every word and every input. Mr. Patterson delves into relevant themes such as honour, self-sufficiency, taboo, religion, gender, race, culture and freedom (Hegel and Cicero are quoted many times). The final pages and reflection had me pulling my hair out.

[Abbie O'Hara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Main idea: slavery rips away our humanity. Because slavery was often a replacement for death (ex: after war the captive population might be submitted to slavery or killed), enslaved people are “socially dead.” They are politically dead, ripped away civil rights. Patterson then makes the claim that Black people today still operate as socially dead humans due to the myth power of the trans Atlantic slave trade in history. This history is inseparable from the present day Black subject.

[Isaiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Orlando Patterson meticulously explores every aspect in this comprehensive comparative study. The sheer volume of information required me to reread and carefully analyze each section, demonstrating the depth and complexity of this well-crafted work. I’ve highlighted and made more notes in this book than I’ve ever done before.

Truly a behemoth.

[Joe Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite being a very dense piece of reading patterson is able to express many thought provoking ideas on our basic understanding of what slavery is. This piece greatly influences many other reading on slavery for the better.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe a 2.5 star read? What do you actually get from a global study of slavery? It seems like such a widespread archive dilutes your argument. That being said, I found the argument that social death is the universal factor of slavery to be interesting. Just not the next several hundred pages.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Religion explains how it is possible to relate to the dead who still live. It says little about how ordinary people should relate to the living who are dead.”

Title: Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, With a New Preface
Author: Orlando Patterson
Year: 2018, 1982
Genre: Nonfiction - Historical sociology
Page count: 528 pages
Date(s) read: 12/4/22-12/11/22
Reading journal entry #325 in 2022

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ambitious and thorough comparative study, exploring the cultural processes underpinning slavery with lots of interesting anthropological examples. It raises some troubling but worthwhile questions about the Western conceptions of property and freedom.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought-provoking and entertaining but not trustworthy scholarship in its details.

[Jeannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as an undergraduate in the 1980s and found it profoundly influential.

[Alex Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on slavery. Explores so many aspects of slavery, while offering a powerful definition to help understand. Tough to read at times (it's a painful topic).

[Racquel]

DNF at 32%. This became a chore to read.

[Jeremy Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very insightful. It especially helps contextualize the Atlantic slave trade, which is the only reference point most Americans have for slavery.

[Sam Diener · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is astonishing in its ambition, scope, and erudition. In its exploration of the geographic and social diversity of slave societies, I learned a huge amount from it.

It was stunning and depressing to read about the sheer number of different societies which enslaved stupefying percentages (as much as an estimated 96% of their populations, such as in Grenada in 1777, and also, to take just two more of the 66 societies in world history that Patterson coded as large-scale slaveholders out of the 186 societies in Murdock's world cultures database (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard...), the Northern section of Seoul Korea, in 1663 enslaved 75% of the population; and Mali, between the years 1200-1500 (pre-European invasions), estimated to have enslaved over 30% of the population).

However, because of the structure of the book, which is theoretical in nature, one doesn't learn a great deal about any of these particular societies. This is the second most annoying aspect of the book - Patterson will make a theoretical claim about the psychological dynamics of enslavement and the ritual cutting of ties between the newly enslaved and their former families and societies, for example, and then back up his claim by referring to the ritual practices of slave societies that most of us have never heard of before. This method, while fascinating, makes it impossible for most non-specialists in the anthropology of slavery to evaluate the theoretical claim itself.

And this leads me to the central thesis of the book, that the central defining element of enslavement is the social death of the enslaved. Despite my non-specialist status, I am thoroughly unconvinced, or more accurately, politically, factually, and ethically opposed to such a formulation. I disagree first because I believe such a formulation essentially adopts the point of view of the enslavers instead of the enslaved. I don't doubt that slaveholders attempted to deny social status to enslaved people, and that this is a vital part of the psychological process that makes it possible for slaveholders to commit such cruelty against other human beings. And I don't even doubt that, through internalized oppression, some people who are enslaved begin to believe that they are socially inferior. But enslaved people aren't socially dead at all: not to themselves, not to other enslaved people in their social network, and not even, in the end, to slaveholders. As Patterson describes himself, slaveholders accorded different enslaved people different levels of social status within the enslaved societies - thus belying his thesis that enslaved people have no social status at all.

So, I'm mystified and outraged by Patterson's title and central thesis, while at the same time I'm genuinely grateful to him for writing the book. Is it possible to fundamentally disagree with the entire approach of an author to the material and still appreciate the book? I think so.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive examination of the human scourge known as slavery across the entire world and throughout history. My edition was comprised of 577 pages, not including notes and similar material. Patterson’s main premise is that slavery can be principally defined as “social death” for the enslaved. That is, loss of all honor, ancestral connection, social status etc. Along the way, the author makes lots of additional points, plus, the book covers what seems like every corner of the Earth, throughout history to chronicle slavery. Multiple aspects of slavery are covered, including the capture, sale , manumission, punishment, sexual exploitation, trade, etc. of slaves. Slaves from field slaves, mining slaves, domestic slaves, to military slaves and eunuchs , who paradoxically rose to positions of power, are covered. The book is full of analysis and hypotheses. Patterson mostly succeeded in convincing me of his main premise.

I found that the book has a few shortcomings. Patterson relies on a lot of Marxist analysis, which I disagree with. Also, while much of the author’s reasoning is sound and fact based, at times, he relies on what seems like just – so hypotheses to make assertions.

Despite this, the book is a vitally important survey of slavery in history. It is a must read for anyone interested in the topic.

[Jon Panofsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

The only reason that I am giving this book 3 stars and no lower, is because it IS the standard work on the subject. While very informative, this book is dreadfully tough to get through. Patterson's writing style has NO flow, and chapters jump from country to country, and from century to century with little seeming flow. This book is heady and not for the beginner. I read this as a graduate student in a course on Atlantic Slavery, otherwise it would not have been on my bookshelf.