Why is slavery called Social Death?

Answer 1

It comes from Orlando Patterson's monograph "Slavery and Social Death." Patterson tried to define exactly what slavery is and to distinguish it from other forms of forced labor or unequal status (for example, labor can also be coerced from children and wives who were not, historically, viewed as equal in status to men but neither are they slaves). Patterson looked at a number of different slave regimes around the world and throughout history and tried to find what elements they had in common. I don't recall all elements of his definition, but the key element was that slaves were considered "socially dead." Slavery was, at it's origins, a substitute for literal death and a kind of fictional death (IIRC Patterson even located some rituals of enslavement which involved someone being symbolically killed). They are NOT considered fully formed people and are NOT members of society. This definition is useful because it applies to all things which we recognize as slavery as well leaving out other unequal statuses which are not slavery. For example, for most of human history a wife was considered as subordinate to her husband. But a wife is a person and is a member of society. Similarly, an indentured servant may be of low status and may work at the exact same jobs as a slave (in 17th century British North America they often worked side by side) but they are considered people and are considered members of society. On the other side of this the idea of social death also allows us to link slaves who face very disparate types of treatment. American slaves, who were particularly low status, are considered socially dead as are Turkish Janisarries, who sometimes controlled the empire, and high status slaves like the Chinese mariner Zheng He.