ABSTRACT
In the America's, Patterson argued, relationships among slaves had no social sanctions or security. Social vitality takes many forms: linguistic, educational, political, economic, artistic, and religious practices all contribute, as do friendship and kinship networks. Major loss of social vitality is a loss of social identity, consequently, a serious loss of meaning for ones existence. Social death has degrees, and it typically also has stages. Sometimes social vitality is recoverable or re-creatable. Major loss of social vitality often robs one even of the ability to give meaning to one's life, thereby destroying a fundamental aspect of one's humanity. Social death can have other sources slavery, banishment, disfigurement, illness, self-chosen isolation. If social death is central, it should be natural to ask why it would not be committing genocide to destroy an evil group that gave its members social identity and vitality.
