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Clean people, unclean people: History, cognition and the essentialization of ‘slaves’ among the Betsileo| old_uid | 13315 |
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| title | Clean people, unclean people: History, cognition and the essentialization of ‘slaves’ among the Betsileo |
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| start_date | 2014/01/24 |
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| schedule | 12h30-13h30 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | In the southern highlands of Madagascar, Betsileo descendants of ‘commoners’ (olompotsy) essentialize slave descendants: they think that slave descendants have an ‘inner essence’ that makes them what they are, cannot be cleansed and will be passed on to their children, no matter what they do. This case of psychological essentialism, as strong as it is among the Betsileo, raises the questions of why, when and how such an essentialization has taken place, since there is evidence that slaves in pre-abolition times (i.e., before 1896), although deemed ‘unclean’, were not essentialized – or only weakly essentialized – by ‘clean’ and free people. The paper will discuss Betsileo history and ethnography, as well as recent research on the essentialism of social categories to suggest an answer to these questions. |
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| responsibles | Dezecache |
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