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2002
- ISIDORE Id: 10670/1.8947c8...
- doi: 10.2307/3322762
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Bonded labor Debt slavery Servitude Servitude for debt Debt bondage Debt, Servitude forCiter ce document
Alain Testart et al., « The extent and significance of debt slavery », Revue française de sociologie (documents), ID : 10.2307/3322762
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Résumé
The phenomenon of debt slavery has either been greatly underestimated or, on the contrary, overestimated through confusion with other ways of dealing with the debtor, like pawning, for instance, or the possibility of reimbursing debt through labor. After carefully defining debt slavery, the article shows how widespread it has been, and explains its social-significance as follows: inequalities between rich and poor, already present in most primitive societies, may be redefined in terms of masters and slaves. The transformation, or threatened transformation, of a debtor into a slave considerably strengthens the power of the dominant. The article concludes with a hypothesis about the origins of the state.
