Kevin Bales - Keeping Current - report on slavery in Scientific American - Brief Article

Chicago Reporter, The, May, 2002 by Stephanie Williams

Contrary to common belief, slavery continues to be practiced around the world, reports Kevin Bales in the April issue of Scientific American. Bales, a sociology professor at the University of Surrey Roehampton in London, cites South Asia and North Africa as areas where slavery is "a millennia-old tradition that has never truly ended." To destroy systems of slavery, new programs are trying to rehabilitate both slaves and slave owners through programs of economic support, counseling and education, he notes.

Slavery is "an insidious mutual dependence that is remarkably difficult for slaveholder as well as slave to break out of," Bales writes, adding, "Our ignorance of their hidden world is vast."