Becker Felicitas, Nyanto Salvatory S, Giblin James, McDougall Ann, Meckelburg Alexander, Pelckmans Lotte
Slavery Abol. 2022 Sep 19;44(1):131-156. doi: 10.1080/0144039X.2022.2121888. eCollection 2023.
This article examines ethical, practical, and methodological challenges in researching the aftermath of slavery in continental East Africa away from the coastal plantation belt. Interest in post-slavery there is recent and inspired by the apparent contrast with West Africa, where the issue is much more salient. The article explains this silence by highlighting politically-motivated avoidance of the issue in colonial sources and the preference of post-colonial historians for 'useful' pasts. Further, it questions the balance of successful integration and continuing marginalization reflected in the apparent obsolescence of slavery. It argues that tracing the trajectories of ex-slaves requires attention to all forms of social inequality and dependency, to the potential status implications for informants of speaking about slavery, and to the variety of terms and fields of meaning relevant to freedom, unfreedom and dependency. Recent research in this vein shows that slave antecedents remain a matter of shame, and that ex-slaves' disappearance as a social category took lifelong efforts on their part. While the social valence of slave antecedents is relatively limited in mainland East Africa, slavery remains a problematic and painful heritage that demands great circumspection by researchers.
本文探讨了在东非大陆沿海种植园带以外地区研究奴隶制后果时所面临的伦理、实践和方法上的挑战。对那里奴隶制后的情况的关注是最近才出现的，并且是受到与西非明显对比的启发，在西非这个问题更为突出。本文通过强调殖民资料中出于政治动机对该问题的回避以及后殖民历史学家对“有用”过去的偏好来解释这种沉默。此外，它质疑了奴隶制明显过时所反映出的成功融入与持续边缘化之间的平衡。文章认为，追踪前奴隶的轨迹需要关注所有形式的社会不平等和依附关系，关注讲述奴隶制对被调查者潜在的地位影响，以及关注与自由、不自由和依附关系相关的各种术语和意义领域。最近这方面的研究表明，有奴隶出身仍然是一件羞耻的事，而且前奴隶作为一个社会类别消失需要他们终生努力。虽然在东非大陆，有奴隶出身的社会影响相对有限，但奴隶制仍然是一个有问题且痛苦的遗产，需要研究人员格外谨慎对待。
