Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Forced Child Labor In El Salvador: Contemporary Economic Servitude, Michelle Doherty

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In 2005, over half of the rural population in El Salvador was living on less than U.S. $2 dollars per day (Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo 2003: 42). The harsh reality of economic subsistence obligates children in El Salvador to contribute to their family’s survival. Employers providing this frail economic lifeline inevitably acquire control over the children. This economic control is a prominent aspect of contemporary slavery and is manifested through violence or exploitation. The enslavement of children in El Salvador not only steals their youth and opportunity to receive an education, but it also places innocent …

Poverty’S Captives, Tim Brauhn

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Today’s manifestations of bondage are a marked departure from those of pre-modern slavery. Now the value of the human “goods” is so low that slavers do not have to worry about damaging them. Two hundred years ago, slaves had to at least be treated with a modicum of safety, if for no other reason than to ensure continued profitability. But in the 20th and 21st centuries, slavers have become less like “hunters” and more like “gatherers,” since their work no longer involves raids and chains, at least in the physical sense. No, today’s raids are the false promises of work …

Under The Iron Thumb: Forced Labor In Myanmar, Anil Raj

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The fight for human rights in Myanmar goes back to its independence in 1948. The Myanmar military (tatmadaw) has engaged in shocking violations of almost every right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The issue of forced labor, however, is of particular concern. Forced labor is employed primarily in development projects, agricultural enterprises, and the military. It is used to impose collective punishment on civilians, to build highly profitable development that strengthens military rule, and to allow the military access and logistical support in the most remote regions of insurgent-occupied territories. Forced labor is a central means …

Human Rights And Contemporary Slavery, Kevin Bales

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The anti-slavery movement will welcome this important compilation of work on debt bondage slavery. In the academic and policy analysis of contemporary slavery, many of the fundamental areas of enslavement are yet to be explored and brought into systematic presentation. This work by the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver helps to build up our understanding of debt bondage, as well as adding to the emerging discipline of contemporary slavery studies. Debt bondage slavery is one of the oldest forms of slavery that continues into the present day. The date of the establishment of hereditary debt …

Le Fou, Le Rebelle, L’Enfant Et La Révolution Haïtienne, Gilbert Doho

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The proliferation of fools in independent African nations’ capitals and major cities should have entailed profound analyses. The period after 1804 in Haiti and after 1960 for Africa is marked by irrationality. From this point of view, Aimé Césaire, doom prophet, uses the Haitian past to warn newly independent African nations. The attempt to understand the phenomena has so far been based on psychoanalysis and other euro-centric methods. In this paper, we will attempt to centre our approach on the gaze and thought of the lunatics themselves in order to understand the madness that has taken hold of post-colonial periods. …

Matthew S. Weinert On Slavery And Emancipation Edited By Rick Halpern And Enrico Del Lago. Oxford, Uk: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. 416pp., Matthew S. Weinert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Slavery and Emancipation edited by Rick Halpern and Enrico del Lago. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. 416pp.

Law And The Making Of Slavery In Colonial Virginia, Ashton Wesley Welch

Ethnic Studies Review

Some authorities from the antebellum period to the present have located the source of the American law of slavery in continental civil law codes and hence in Roman slave law. They have been unable or unwilling to connect the brutal system of institutionalized racial slavery that emerged in Virginia and elsewhere in the American slave kingdom with what they have perceived as an open, freedom-favoring Anglo-American legal system and have thus sought an explanation of its legal underpinnings in other jurisdictical standards. Both the absence of chattel slavery in English law and the common law's claimed bias in favor of …

Things & Ideas: Explaining Moral Evolution In International Relations, Amy Eckert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention by Neta C. Crawford. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 466pp.

Middle Passage To Freedom: Black Atlantic Consciousness In Charles Johnson's Middle Passage And S. I. Martin's Incomparable World, Robert Nowatzki

Ethnic Studies Review

Charles Johnson's novel, Middle Passage, and S.I. Martin's novel, Incomparable World, illustrate through mobile, culturally hybrid protagonists Paul Gilroy's notion of Black Atlantic consciousness, which is based on cultural hybridity and physical mobility across the Atlantic between Europe and Africa, America and the Caribbean. I argue that both novels blur the line between freedom and slavery, between oppressed and oppressor, and disrupt the links between blackness and slavery, between mobility and freedom. In both novels the diasporic Black Atlantic experiences privilege masculinity, since neither novel includes black women who can experience the mobility that the male protagonists do.

Review Of: Health And Disease In Human History (Robert I. Rotberg Ed.), Terry Cromwell

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Review of the book: Health and Disease in Human History: A Journal of Interdisciplinary History Reader (Robert I. Rotberg ed., MIT Press 2000). ISBN 0- 262-18207-6 [345 pp. $25.00 Paper, 5 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02142].

The Great Divide: A Comparison Of Kentucky And Ohio Counties Along The Ohio River (1840-1860), Jennie Berry

University Avenue Undergraduate Journal of Economics

This paper operates under an opposite assumption and, instead, argues that the Kentucky-Ohio border is an ideal test case for the null hypothesis that the institution of slavery per se had no significant economic effects. Kentucky and Ohio counties tracing the Ohio River are composed of the same soil and face similar weather conditions (Blanford, 2001; Barnhisel, 2001; Foster, 2001). Both regions likewise claim the same geographical access to outside markets.

Signs, Symbols, And Slave Culture: Representations In Black Thunder, Sandra M. Grayson

Trotter Review

Black Thunder (1936), by Arna Bontemps, is a historical novel that recreates Gabriel Prosser's 1800 slave revolt. This novel is useful in reviewing some of the historical and cultural linkages between Black slaves in the U.S. and African cultures. Thematically, Black Thunder does more than represent Black people's self-assertion through revolt, it also shows their assertion of identity through practicing Atlantic (or western) African traditions, especially those of the Kongo. This is a topic that continues to be significant in light of greater contemporary political and economic linkages between U.S. Blacks and Africans, as well as increasing African immigration into …

Revisiting The Question Of Reparations, James Jennings

Trotter Review

Recent congressional action to award Japanese Americans "reparations" for their internment during World War II, as well as the Florida state legislature's act to award $150,000 to black survivors of a white riot rampage of Rosewood, a black town, in 1923, has contributed to a re-emergence of the call for black reparations. Several black state and local politicians and leaders across the United States have called for legislative action that would compensate blacks for three and one half centuries of racial enslavement. The awarding of reparations to Japanese Americans is not the only precedent for indemnity to a group of …

Book Review: The Arrogance Of Race: Historical Perspectives On Slavery, Racism, And Social Inequality, Vernon J. Williams Jr.

Trotter Review

The Arrogance of Race is George M. Fredrick son’s latest work, and it is a profound one. This series of articles, many of which have been published previously, was written over a span of some 20 years and represents the mature reflections of one of this country’s leading intellectual historians. The work should be read by all serious students of race and racism.

Danish Perceptions And West Indian Realities: Slavery In The Danish West Indies, Karen Fog Olwig

The Bridge

The year 1987 marked the 70th anniversary of the sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States of America. With the sale of the three small islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John, Denmark had disposed of all her tropical colonies, which at one time had included possessions on the Gold Coast in Africa, the present Ghana, and in southeastern India, most importantly Trankebar.