THE POLICY FORUM by J. S. Brashares et al. (“Wildlife decline and social conflict,” 25 July, p. 376) links environmental degradation to child slavery and human trafficking. However, the causal pathways between wildlife decline and social outcomes, especially child slavery, have not been empirically tested; it is likely that wildlife declines are only a tiny component of the causes of exploitati...

Starting from the 15 century in the Atlantic slave trade, black people have been treated by lighter-skinned counterparts as commodities to be sold and bought. The effects of the trade and the resulting dehumanization can still be seen in subsequent historical events and in today’s society. Analyzing the Haitian Revolution in the late 18 century through literature such as The Grateful Negro by M...

The family and the church have been the most important institutions in African American families and communities since slavery. African American grandmothers have played a pivotal role in both institutions. Their role responsibilities, especially in the extended family context, are broad and elastic. They have performed crucial roles in the care and welfare of grandchildren, great-grandchildren...

The Prisoner Dilemma has basically two known type of evolutive answers that allow cooperation among individuals. One proposes cooperation is possible among close relatives. The other is a strategy on when to cooperate and when not to, according to the actions of the other players. An example of these strategies is playing tit-fortat. This paper proposes a third and completely different solution...

This essay examines Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) in light of new archival findings on the medical practices of Dr. James Norcom (Dr. Flint in the narrative). While critics have sharply defined the feminist politics of Jacobs's sexual victimization and resistance, they have overlooked her medical experience in slavery and her participation in reform after escape....

The “staples thesis” argues that institutions in a given region could be explained by the nature of production of its prevailing staples, whereby slavery is likely to emerge in “slave-conducive” crops, such as cotton, rice, and sugarcane. This paper evaluates the thesis using a unique natural experiment from nineteenth-century rural Egypt, the cotton boom that occurred because of the American C...