%0 Journal Article
%A Rossi, Benedetta
%D 2020
%F discovery:10135298
%I L'Harmattan
%J L’Ouest Saharien
%K Morocco, Mauritania, ḥarāṭīn, slavery, slave descent, identity, emancipation, analytical categories.
%P 187-208
%T From Slavery? Rethinking Slave Descent as an Analytical Category: The Case of the Mauritanian and Moroccan Hratin
%U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10135298/
%V 10-11
%X What does it mean, after worldwide legal abolition, to define groups or  individuals as ‘slave descendants’ ? When slavery was legal, laws and norms  distinguished between slave and free (legal) status and defined relations of  production, reproduction, and property between enslaved persons and their owners.  Today the vernacular terminology that identifies certain African groups as ‘slaves’  or ‘slave descendants’ (e.g. ḥarāṭīn, ˁabīd, etc.) is often an anachronism unrelated to  their economic and political conditions. But in some cases slave origins continue to  affect the everyday lives of people who never ceased to be exploited by the  descendants of slave-owners. This article compares the identitarian, economic, and  political strategies of people classified as slave descendants in Morocco and  Mauritania; it discusses the connection between labels that imply slave ancestry and  the circumstances of the carriers of such labels; and it considers implications for the  analytical terminology of African slavery studies.
%Z This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.