Emergent Conversation 10

Permanent Memorial to Honour Victims of Slavery The “Ark of Return”, the permanent memorial to honour the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, located at the Visitors’ Plaza of UN headquarters in New York. Designed by architect Rodney Leon, it was unveiled on 25 March 2015. United Nations Photo/Rick Bajornas. CC BY NC ND.

This PoLAR Online Emergent Conversation, On Reparations for Slavery and Colonialism, engages anthropological and socio-legal scholars to understand the challenges that new reparations movements simultaneously pose and confront. It seeks to contribute to an emergent research program that engages the social worlds that produce and are produced by reparations claims for historical injustices with a focus on slavery, colonialism, segregation, and racial discrimination. Together, these pieces open a preliminary conversation about social worlds and logics of repair, and their pressing significance for anthropological research on reparations for slavery and colonialism. We are introducing the series on August 1^st, Emancipation Day in the English-speaking Caribbean, with Keston Perry’s piece on climate reparations. We invite readers to continue their reflection and engagements in the coming weeks as we publish new essays weekly.

Edited by Anna Kirstine Schirrer, Digital Editorial Fellow 2019-20.