Slavery and Essentialism in Highland Madagascar

This book explores the prejudice against slave descendants in highland Madagascar and its persistence more than a century after the official abolition of slavery.

Denis Regnier is Assistant Professor and Head of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. He gained his PhD in anthropology from the London School of Economics, UK.

1. An encounter with southern Betsileo 'slaves' 2. Three lenses: ethnography, history and cognition 3. The Berosaiña 4. Contested histories 5. Marriage in Beparasy 6. Unilateral unions and their consequences 7. Mixing ancestries and keeping a memory of origins 8. Essentialism: evidence, development and transmission Conclusion