Reconfiguring Slavery focuses on the range of trajectories followed by slavery as an institution since the various abolitions of the nineteenth century. It also considers the continuing and multi-faceted strategies that descendants of both owners and slaves have developed to make what use they can of their forebears' social positions, or to distance themselves from them. Reconfiguring Slavery contains both anthropological and historical contributions that present new empirical evidence on contemporary manifestations of slavery and related phenomena in Mauritania, Benin, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and the Gambia. As a whole, the volume advances a renewed conceptual framework for understanding slavery in West Africa today: instead of retracing the end of West African slavery, this work highlights the preliminary contours of its recent reconfigurations.



About the Author
Dr Benedetta Rossi is Lecturer in African Studies in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham.

Reviews
Reviews 'This stimulating collection for West African scholars provides an abundance of examples of the transformations in traditional forms of slavery covering the range of possibilities, from formerly subjugated groups that now have the upper hand over their former masters to situations where traditional forms of symbolic and financial domination still prevail.' * Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 5 *
'This is an exceptionally interesting book. It breaks new ground and makes a significant contribution to slavery and, more particularly, post-slavery studies.'
Suzanne Miers
'An important contribution to Africanist scholarship ... it has every chance of achieving the reconfiguration prefigured in its title.'
P. F. Moraes Farias, University of Birmingham * University of Birmingham *
'Reconfiguring Slavery has broad academic and non-academic appeal.' * African Affairs, vol 110, no 440 *
'Benedetta Rossi's analysis bridges an important gap in the conceptualisation of slavery in the history and contemporary politics of West Africa.'
Paul Lovejoy, Slavery and Abolition, vol. 31, no. 4 * Slavery and Abolition, vol. 31, no. 4 *
'In a varied but coherent collection of case studies to which Benedetta Rossi's stimulating introduction does full justice, the red thread is that of the multitude of ways in which the descendants of slaves attempt to evade the heritage of the past, how they negotiate the vestiges of the stigma in their contemporary lives, often in paradoxical and ambiguous ways.'
Roger Botte, Africa, Vol. 80, No, 3 * Africa, Vol. 80, No, 3 *
'Reconfiguring Slavery is an important book that provides rich insight into processes of emancipation and the legacies of slavery in West Africa. Most chapters draw heavily on the testimony of former slaves or slave descendants, which gives special liveliness to the difficult conceptual issues under consideration. The book has much to offer for comparisons between slavery in West Africa and in other world regions, in particular perhaps in Asian settings. Many chapters in the volume also shed light on the impact and reach of Western imperialism in Africa. Reconfiguring Slavery will find its readers mainly among scholars specializing in African studies and slave studies, but teachers of world history courses interested in Africa will also find the book rewarding and stimulating even though the chapters do not make for suitable readings in undergraduate college courses.'
Claus K. Meyer, World History Connected



Book Information
ISBN 9781781383056
Author Benedetta Rossi
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press