ABOUT
This partnership addresses the vital issue of harnessing data to understand identity in Global Africa during the era of trans-Atlantic slavery and the legacy of slavery on self-perceptions and social conceptions of people of African descent. A focus on identity recognizes that the population that settled the Americas under slavery had identifiable roots in African societies and social formations. The diverse ways of identification that have characterized people in Global Africa have changed from the era of international slavery to the modern context of racialized social injustices to which Black people are subjected.
Our aim is to enable the multidirectional flow of social sciences and humanities research knowledge among researchers, and across academia and society as a whole. Such knowledge mobilization will enhance intellectual, cultural, social and economic influence in shaping public policy and perceptions. The benefits can be measured through an examination of the impact in combating ignorance about the contributions of people of African peoples to the development of modern societies. Despite the inhibiting factors of the slavery legacy and the emergence of racialized discrimination and subjugation, modern society incorporates African-derived taste in music and artistic presentation and participates fully in sports and cultural expression. The ever changing forms of identity, both of self-recognition and the assignment of "otherness" to others are complex topics that require multidisciplinary, international investigation that transcends linguistic and cultural barriers and promote new approaches to research, enhance accessibility to new knowledge, and facilitate the dissemination of that knowledge.
"Three Merchants by the Toilets or Traders, Creole, Negro-Creole and Cabougle or African" (caption translation).
"Figure 18" in Pierre Jacques Benoit, Voyage à Surinam; description des possessions néerlandaises dans la Guyane (Bruxelles: Société des Beaux-Arts de Wasme et Laurent, 1839).
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"Convoy of coffee heading toward the city”
A water color by Jean Baptiste Debret. Held by a museum in Rio de Janeiro. Published in Ana Maria de Moraes, O Brasil dos viajantes (Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, 1994), image 451, p. 85.
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OBJECTIVES
The team’s working definition of social innovation, the fundamental component of what we consider to be originality, includes any idea that can create a new method for social sciences and humanities research to enhance transnational research collaborations. This definition describes the database orientation of our projects. We have organized large bodies of data in generating user friendly websites to extract data easily for research and educational purposes in relation to topics that focus on Global Africa during the period of international slavery.
We have organized data according to the source, as in the case of the “Liberated Africans” taken off slave ships in the 19th century, or the “Freedom Narratives” of individuals who were born in West Africa during the era of slavery. This approach has enabled the application of a method to explore the meaning of African ethnonyms during the era of the trans-Atlantic slavery and after, and as integral part of this proposal, the basis for exploring the difficult and contentious meaning of identity in the context of Blackness and the legacy of people of African descent in the area there defined as Global Africa, i.e., continental Africa and the regions across the Atlantic Ocean, the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to places there.
DESCRIPTION
The project centres on the need to understand the origins and trajectories of people of African descent who populated the trans-Atlantic and trans-Islamic worlds in the modern era, first by reconstructing biographical profiles from a variety of documentation including marriage records, newspaper advertisements, Registers of Liberated Africans, plantation inventories, sales, court records and other materials on individuals born in West Africa. Second, this platform for biographical information on Africans who were forced into slavery enables a method for analysing demographic change that can confront social inequalities through the trajectories of people over generations and who have been exposed to the changing forms of racism. Taken together, therefore, these interlocking projects are the ingredients that constitute a social innovation that will help determine historically why systemic racism persists in the present.
The integration of vast quantities of primary source materials using an innovative methodology will enable a reconstruction of a major theme in modern history – the role of slavery in a trans-national and trans-Atlantic context. Given the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024), we think this research project is especially timely and coincides with the objectives of the UNESCO Slave Route Project: Resistance, Liberty, Heritage. As the public is grappling with issues concerning anti-Black racism and global inequalities, DATAS can address the impact of slavery in the development of the modern world and the legacy that continues to shape contemporary society through racism and discrimination.
Presentación de niños afrocolombianos en La Teletón ’Tumaco Unido y Solidario’.
De Policía Nacional de Colombia - Esta imagen proviene de la galería Flickr de la Policía Nacional de Colombia., CC BY-SA 2.0.
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PROJECT IMPACT
Through our websites,social media formats, and publication, we will privide access to open source content for academic and non academic audiences...
METHODOLOGY
This proposal builds specifically on SSHRC funded SHADD:Testimonies of Enslavement Project and the online digital repository of autobiographical...
PARTICIPANTS
Lovejoy and Schwarz have collaborated on Sierra Leone Public Archives Project, supported by the British Library Endangered Archives Programme, Which...
CONTACT
Mailing Address
329 York Lanes, York University 4700 Keele Street Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3
Email Address
support@regid.ca