Perspective

Orlando Patterson is the John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He obtained his undergraduate education at London University and his graduate education at the London School of Economics. As a graduate student, he was interested in Jamaican slavery and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the subject. This was published as a book called The Sociology of Slavery: Jamaica. His interests developed into an examination of slavery on a broader level, studying the effects of slavery and power on a people and the socioeconomic-political system. This interest in slavery and its effects led Professor Patterson into an examination of freedom, the antithesis of slavery. Professor Patterson has authored at least seven books dealing with this area of sociology. Volume I of Freedom is concerned with how freedom develops as a social value in Western civilization and traces its development to slavery. The author draws on many...