Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regard to their labor. It predates written records and was practiced in almost every ancient civilization, becoming widespread specifically after the Neolithic Revolution's development of agriculture roughly 11,000 years ago made a surplus, and therefore an incentive to extract others' labor, possible. Orlando Patterson's sociological account, in Slavery and Social Death, defines 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, arguing enslaved people characteristically underwent both an external severing of prior identity, such as name changes and branding, and an internal severing from kinship rights and genealogical continuity, a condition he termed social death. The thesis is contested; see the linked open question.
Facts
Institution TypeSourced to the subject's own accountStratification system: an extreme, property-based hierarchy of domination in which one person's labor and legal personhood are held as another's possession, distinguished from the caste and class stratification systems already on this atlas by its basis in outright ownership rather than birth-status or wealth alone. 1 Emergence PeriodSourced to the subject's own accountPredates written records; documented in almost every ancient civilization, becoming widespread specifically after the Neolithic Revolution's agricultural surplus made large-scale extraction of others' labor both possible and economically worthwhile, roughly 11,000 years ago. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Both are property-adjacent, hereditary or quasi-hereditary systems of stratification, though caste is not premised on legal ownership of the person the way slavery is.
Sociologists compare serfdom and slavery as related but distinct systems of unfree labor, distinguished chiefly by the serf's attachment to land rather than status as property outright.
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
Does Orlando Patterson's social death thesis, that slavery is defined by an enslaved person's severance from kinship rights and genealogical continuity, accurately capture the lived condition of enslaved people, or did enslaved communities retain meaningful social and kinship ties that the thesis un
Patterson defines 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, arguing enslaved people underwent both external markers of severed identity and internal severance from kinship rights and genealogical continuity, social death. Named critics dispute this: V. P. Franklin objected to Patterson's refusal to define slaves as property; Michael Fellman argued Patterson failed to compare enslaved people's treatment to other marginalized groups; and Michael Craton noted the thesis rests on too little primary testimony from enslaved people themselves about their own experience of honor, domination and community.
What would resolve this Michael Craton's own critique names what would help settle this: more primary-source testimony directly from enslaved people, across more societies, about their own experience of kinship, honor and community under slavery, rather than testimony mediated entirely through the institution's own records.
Historical SociologyWikipedia: Social Death
Frequently Asked Questions
Does slavery always mean legal ownership of a person?
The core, chattel form is legal ownership of a person as property, but scholars debate whether that legal category is the right test for identifying slavery across very different societies and time periods.
Slavery in its clearest, chattel form is the ownership of a person as property, especially with respect to their labor, and this is how the institution is most often legally defined. Orlando Patterson's influential social death thesis argues the defining feature is instead an enslaved person's severance from kinship rights and genealogical continuity, a definition that can apply even where a society's own law recognizes no formal category of ownership. Historians including Michael Craton have challenged Patterson's thesis as resting on too little direct testimony from enslaved people themselves; this atlas carries the disagreement as its own open question rather than resolving it.
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