Dictionary:

emancipation

  (ĭ-măn'sə-pā'shən)

1. The act or an instance of emancipating.
2. The condition of being emancipated.

Freedom to assume certain legal responsibilities normally associated only with adults, said of a minor who is granted this freedom by a court. If both parents die in an accident, for instance, the 16-year-old eldest son may be emancipated by a judge to act as guardian for his younger brothers and sisters.

noun

The state of not being in confinement or servitude: freedom, liberation, liberty, manumission. See free/unfree.

n. 1. the action or process of setting free, especially from legal, social, or political restrictions.

2. the action or process of delivering from slavery.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

A term applied specifically to the freeing of slaves from bondage, but which is used more generally in relation to the liberation of any person or group from social or legal restraint.

The act or process by which a person is liberated from the authority and control of another person.

The term is primarily employed in regard to the release of a minor by his or her parents, which entails a complete relinquishment of the right to the care, custody, and earnings of such child, and a repudiation of parental obligations. The emancipation may be express — pursuant to a voluntary agreement between parent and child — or implied from conduct that denotes consent. It may be absolute or conditional, total or partial. A partial emancipation disengages a child for only a portion of the period of minority, or from only a particular aspect of the parent's rights or duties.

There is no determinate age when a child becomes emancipated; it usually, but not automatically, occurs upon the attainment of the age of majority.

See: parent and child.

n.

A bondman's change from the tyranny of another to the despotism of himself.

    He was a slave:  at word he went and came;
        His iron collar cut him to the bone.
    Then Liberty erased his owner's name,
        Tightened the rivets and inscribed his own.
                                                                  G.J.

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Emancipation is a term used to describe various efforts to obtain political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchised group, or more generally in discussion of such matters.

The word emancipation was in common use in political affairs of 18th and 19th century political discourse, as in Catholic or Jewish emancipation movements (see the emancipation page for more examples), while female suffrage was a major goal of women's emancipation movements.

Among others, Karl Marx discussed political emancipation in his 1844 essay "On the Jewish Question", although often in addition to (or in contrast with) the term human emancipation. Marx's views of political emancipation in this work were summarized by one writer as entailing "equal status of individual citizens in relation to the state, equality before the law, regardless of religion, property, or other “private” characteristics of individual persons."^[1]

"Political emancipation" as a phrase is less common in modern usage, especially outside academic, foreign or activist contexts. However, similar concepts may be referred to by other terms. For instance, in the United States the civil rights movement culminating in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, can be seen as further realization of events such as the Emancipation Proclamation and abolition of slavery a century earlier.

See also:

• Freedom (political)
• Emancipation of women, including the women's suffrage movement
• Catholic emancipation
• Jewish emancipation
• Emancipation of minors, where a minor becomes an adult in practice, usually by receiving a declaration of liberation from a court expressly for this purpose
• Youth rights
• Abolitionism (abolition of slavery), a political movement that sought to end the practice of slavery and the worldwide slave trade
• Emancipation Proclamation, a declaration by United States President Abraham Lincoln announcing that all slaves in Confederate territory still in rebellion were freed
• Manumission, the freedom of a slave by the owner voluntarily
• Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, the liquidation of serf dependence of Russian peasants by Alexander II of Russia
• Emancipist was a term used for former transported convicts in the Australian penal colonies given conditional or absolute pardon
• Self-determination
• Revolution (disambiguation)
• Liberation (disambiguation)

References

1. ^ Notes on Political and Human Emancipation, Mark Rupert, Syracuse University.

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