Sexuality and the Second Slavery

Figuring Sexuality in Racialized Labor Formations

Bibliographic Data

ID4801923
AuthorsMichael L Stephens (0000-0001-6653-3369, Department of Sociology Binghamton University Binghamton New York USA)
Year2022
Volume35
Issue4
Pages462-487
Publication date2022-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Historical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0952-1909 • E-ISSN: 1467-6443
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/johs.12385
OpenAlexW4307712579
LanguageEN
References cited13

From the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, sexuality was a key factor in the reorganization of New World slavery through the period described as the Second Slavery. With the early nineteenth century bans on the transatlantic slave trade initiated by the United States and the British Empire, there was a corresponding transition from prior plantation economies focused on US Upper South tobacco and Caribbean sugar islands toward more differentiated forms of labor based on hiring out in domestic services, manufacture, and the expansion into new frontiers of accumulation in the New South of the Mississippi Delta, Cuba, and Brazil. This qualitative change and expansion of New World slavery carried gendered understandings based on the sexuality and reproductive capabilities of enslaved people. Using Tomich's conception of the Second Slavery, I incorporate an analysis that demonstrates how conceptions of sexuality were integral to racializing and gendering processes of subordination that reveal the heterogeneity of the historical and economic moment

Empire · Human sexuality · Political science · Sociology · Subordination (linguistics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Race, History, and American Society · Sex work and related issues · Gender Studies · Law

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