ABSTRACT In the southern highlands of Madagascar, Betsileo free descendants strictly avoid marrying descendants of slaves, whom they regard as ‘unclean people’. A close examination of the history of a slave descent group shows that the most serious difficulty faced by former slaves after abolition was not access to land but ritual uncleanliness, which prevented intermarriage with free people and led to the essentialisation of the now pervasive hierarchical distinction between clean and unclean people. Today, free descendants actively maintain a social memory of ‘origins’ and remain extremely vigilant about not marrying the slave descendants, who are ‘locked’ into an unequal and unclean status that they cannot easily escape.

中文翻译：

---

永远的奴隶？关于马达加斯加南部高地起源的不平等、不洁和警惕

摘要 在马达加斯加南部高地，Betsileo 自由后裔严格避免与奴隶的后裔结婚，他们认为奴隶的后裔是“不洁的人”。对奴隶后裔群体历史的仔细研究表明，废除奴隶制后，前奴隶面临的最严重的困难不是获得土地，而是仪式上的不洁，这阻碍了与自由人的通婚，并导致了现在普遍存在的等级区分的本质化。干净的人和不干净的人。今天，自由子孙积极保持着“本源”的社会记忆，对不与被“锁定”在无法轻易逃脱的不平等和不洁状态的奴隶子孙通婚保持高度警惕。