Socio-technical analysis of slave workforce-based production systems (Africa-America, between the XVI and XIX centuries). A theoretical-methodological proposal

HERNÁN THOMAS; MARTA GOLDBERG; SILVIA MALLO; ALFONSO BUCH; ALBERTO LALOUF; SANTIAGO GARRIDO; GUILLERMO SANTOS

Vancouver

Otro; 2006 Annual Meeting: “Silence, Suffering and Survival”; 2006

Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)

The aim of this paper is to introduce an ongoing research project in which the technology-slavery relationship is analyzed from a sociotechnical perspective. To focus again on that issue from this analytical point of view supposes the chance to identify new relationships, to re-build new processes, to generate new explanations. At the same time, the paper is a proposal for a theoretical-methodological approach that had never been applied –within the Latin-American countries, at least- on historical and social studies. In this sense, it can be read like an attempt to broad the possible analytical approaches used for historical studies. Until now, many scholarly works have been addressed to the analysis of the slave trade between the XVIth and XIXth centuries and the production systems based on the slave labor force as well from economical, demographical as legal approaches. Particularly, in the socio-historical studies on slave economy, the sparse descriptions of the specific technologies developed in that period were circumscribed to the different capture and transport’s techniques, the tools and facilities used in the slave system, and several disciplinary methods. The research project starts making an analytical distinction within the slave-based production systems among: a) the processes of slave production; capture, transport, concentration and slave trading (from the capture inside Africa to the end market), and b) slave workforce-based production processes within plantations, haciendas, mining and urban jobs. In a first stage the research will be developed only about the slaves’ production processes.