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Ara Karaboghossian PhD Thesis, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 2014 Summary: There has recently been a plea to better problematize the concept of practice in International Relations (IR) theory. This study attempts to explore (and contribute to) the merits of advocating a practice turn in IR. The thesis begins by exploring the practice theory literature to facilitate the elaboration of a specific practice inspired theoretical framework. It then deploys the framework on the slavery case to argue that a focus on practice(s) can help us better apprehend and explain both the discontinuities and continuities connecting the global abolition of slavery to a set of present-day practices commonly referred to as contemporary forms of slavery. By harnessing the slavery case, the objective is to illustrate the fertility of a practice approach in bridging and adding specificity to some of the more rigid dichotomizations and treatments of global continuities and ruptures. Ultimately, the hope is to eventually transpose the theoretical framework to investigate other issue areas. The overarching and longer term aim is to facilitate comparative studies to investigate and better apprehend issues of global stability and change – with a view to transforming our social world. Ara Karaboghossian PhD Thesis, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 2014 Slavery as Practice: Continuity and Rupture Ara Karaboghossian PhD Thesis, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 2014 Contents Preface 0 1 Practice Theories and Approaches 11 2 Slavery: Historical Ubiquity & Normalization 51 3 Practices, Dispositions and Rupture: the 1807 British Slave Trade Ban 89 4 Externalization and Internationalization: the European Phase 152 5 Externalization and Internationalization: Challenges in the Non-Transatlantic European Realm 204 6 Internationalization, International Machinery and Redefining Slavery 239 Conclusion 273 Bibliography 284 Ara Karaboghossian PhD Thesis, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 2014 Preface Ara Karaboghossian PhD Thesis, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 2014 Slavery and its (‘Contemporary’) Forms? Slavery is a topic that is heavily researched. Its history and numerous facets are elucidated from the vantage point of various perspectives corresponding to the concerns and foci of differing academic disciplines.1 Arguably, a commonality that runs through much of this varied literature is its treatment – explicit or implicit – of slavery as a thing of the past. This thesis is concerned with how this commonly accepted representation relates to – and reconciles with – the evolution and/or development of a range of activities that have been conceptualized in a growing body of literature (proliferating over the last four decades2) as 1 Peter Andreas and Ethan Nadlemann, Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)., Roger Anstey, "Capitalism and Slavery: A Critique," The Economic History Review 21, no. 2 (1968)., ———, "The Pattern of British Abolitionism in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," in Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey, ed. Christine Bolt and Seymour Drescher (Kent: Wm Dawson & Sons Ltd., 1980)., Kevin Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)., Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon, eds., Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807-1975 (Sussex: Sussex Academic Press,2009)., Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (London: Verso, 1988)., Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006)., Ian Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)., Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)., Huw T. David, "Transnational Advocacy in the Eighteenth Century: Transatlantic Activism and the Anti-Slavery Movement," Global Networks 7, no. 3 (2007)., David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1966)., ———, Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)., Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977)., ———, "Public Opinion and Parliament in the Abolition of the British Slave Trade," in The British Slave Trade: Abolition, Parliament and People, ed. Stephen Farrell, Melanie Unwin, and James Walvin (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007)., Betty Fladeland, "Abolitionist Pressures on the Concert of Europe, 1814-1822," The Journal of Modern History 38, no. 4 (1966)., Peter Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)., Chaim Kaufmann and Robert Pape, "Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain's Sixty-Year Campaign against the Atlantic Slave Trade," International Organization 53, no. 4 (1999)., Suzanne Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2003)., Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)., Joel Quirk, The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)., and Eric Eustace Williams, Capitalism & Slavery (London: Andre Deutsch, 1964)., among many others. 2 For some recent examples see UN, "Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery," United Nations, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/SupplementaryConventionAbolitionOfSlavery.aspx., Working Group on Slavery (UN), "Report of the Working Group on Slavery on Its First Session," (Geneva1975)., ———, "Report of the Woking Group on Slavery on Its Twelfth Session," (Geneva1987)., Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem., Anna M. Troubnikoff, "Trafficking in Women and Children : Current Issues and Developments." (Nova Science Publishers, 2003)., Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy., Kevin Bales and Becky Cornell, Slavery Today (Toronto, Berkeley: Groundwood Books, 2008)., Joel Quirk, Unfinished Business: A Comparative Survey of Historical and Contemporary Slavery (UNESCO, 2009)., and Quirk, The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking. 1 Ara Karaboghossian PhD Thesis, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 2014 slavery’s modern and/or novel incarnations. The commonly accepted expression that is used to signify this consortium of activities is ‘contemporary (or modern) forms of slavery’. These ‘modern’ forms of slavery include, but are not limited to, practices such as forced and bonded labour, domestic servitude and human trafficking. A quick glimpse at some statistics demonstrates that slavery is definitely not a thing of the past. In a key piece of literature about modern forms of slavery, Kevin Bales (a prominent antislavery activist and scholar who has contributed to documenting, exposing and raising the global profile of slavery in the 20th and 21st centuries) places the number of people engaged in contemporary forms of slavery worldwide (in 1999) at 27 million. Bales makes it explicit that in comparison to some NGO estimates that place the numbers as high as 200 million, his total is a conservative one that is derived from collating and compiling data from a relatively exhaustive number of sources.3 Another authoritative source is the International Labour Organization (ILO). A 2002 ILO report places the number of children worldwide engaged in the “worst forms of child labour” at 8.4 million while a 2005 report estimates that there are 12.3 million people worldwide engaged in forced labour.4 Finally, the U.S State Department’s Trafficking in Persons 2006 report estimates that 800,000 people are trafficked internationally ever year.5 Other estimates abound but these are considered relatively authoritative. From this very brief statistical survey, it is clear that slavery is not an historical artefact. 3 Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy., p. 8. 4 A Global Alliance against Forced Labour: Global Report under the Follow-up to the Ilo Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work: International Labour Conference 93nd Session 2005. Report I (B), (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2005)., p. 10 and Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labour, (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2002)., pp. 14 and 23-27. 5 This estimate has recently been the subject of some controversy due methodological queries and uncertainties but is reiterated in the 2008 version of the report. Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2006, (Washington D.C: U.S Department of State, 2006). and Trafficking in Persons Report: June 2008, (Washington: Department of State, 2008)., p. 7. 2 Ara Karaboghossian PhD Thesis, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 2014 The erroneous and commonly accepted depictions of slavery’s relegation to the historical dustbin, and the conception and representation of some present-day phenomena as a grouping of modern and/or novel activities