This book explores the prejudice against slave descendants in highland Madagascar and its persistence more than a century after the official abolition of slavery. 'Unclean people' is a widespread expression in the southern highlands of Madagascar, and refers to people of alleged slave descent who are discriminated against on a daily basis and in a variety of ways. Denis Regnier shows that prejudice is rooted in a strong case of psychological essentialism: free descendants think that 'slaves' have a 'dirty' essence that is impossible to cleanse. Regnier's field experiments question the widely accepted idea that the social stigma against slavery is a legacy of pre-colonial society. He argues, to the contrary, that the essentialist construal of 'slaves' is the outcome of the historical process triggered by the colonial abolition of slavery: whereas in pre-abolition times slaves could be cleansed through ritual means, the abolition of slavery meant that slaves were transformed only superficially into free persons, while their inner essence remained unchanged and became progressively constructed as 'forever unchangeable'. Based on detailed fieldwork, this volume will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, African studies, development studies, cultural psychology, and those looking at the legacy of slavery.

The Pacific Islands have some of the highest rates of family violence in the world. Addressing the contemporary mutations of Pacific Island families and the shifting understandings of violence in the context of rapid social change, this book investigates the conflict dynamics generated by these transformations. The contributors draw from detailed case studies in a range of Pacific territories to examine family violence in relation to the social, economic and political situation of native populations as well as individual, collective and institutional responses to the development of violence within and upon the family. They focus on vernacular understandings, conflicting social norms, the emergence of different types of violent patterns, the impact of violence on individuals and communities, and local attempts at mitigating or combating it. Combining ethnographic expertise with engaged scholarship, this volume offers a vivid account of ongoing social change in Pacific Island societies and a crucial contribution to the understanding of family violence as a social process, cultural construct, and political issue. This book will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of violence and the family, Pacific studies, development studies, and the social and cultural anthropology of Oceania.

This book explores the prejudice against slave descendants in highland Madagascar and its persistence more than a century after the official abolition of slavery. 'Unclean people' is a widespread expression in the southern highlands of Madagascar, and refers to people of alleged slave descent who are discriminated against on a daily basis and in a variety of ways. Denis Regnier shows that prejudice is rooted in a strong case of psychological essentialism: free descendants think that 'slaves' have a 'dirty' essence that is impossible to cleanse. Regnier's field experiments question the widely accepted idea that the social stigma against slavery is a legacy of pre-colonial society. He argues, to the contrary, that the essentialist construal of 'slaves' is the outcome of the historical process triggered by the colonial abolition of slavery: whereas in pre-abolition times slaves could be cleansed through ritual means, the abolition of slavery meant that slaves were transformed only superficially into free persons, while their inner essence remained unchanged and became progressively constructed as 'forever unchangeable'. Based on detailed fieldwork, this volume will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, African studies, development studies, cultural psychology, and those looking at the legacy of slavery.

Explores the culturally complex and cosmopolitan histories of islands off the African coast Islands and island chains like Cabo Verde, Madagascar, and Bioko are often sidelined in contemporary understandings of Africa in which mainland nation-states take center stage in the crafting of historical narratives. Yet in the modern period, these small offshore spaces have often played important if inconsistent roles in facilitating intra- and intercontinental exchanges that have had lasting effects on the cultural, economic, and political landscape of Africa. In African Islands: Leading Edges of Empire and Globalism, contributors argue for the importance of Africa's islands in integrating the continent into wider networks of trade and migration that links it with Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Essays consider the cosmopolitan and culturally complex identities of Africa's islands, analyzing the process and extent to which trade, slavery, and migration bonded African elements with Asian, Arabic, and European characteristics over the years. While the continental and island nations have experienced similar cycles of invasion, boom, and bust, essayists note both similarities and striking differences in how these events precipitated economic changes in the different geographic areas. This book, a much-needed broadly comparative study of the African islands, will be an important resource for students and scholars of the region and of topics such as colonialism, economic history, and cultural hybridity.