The Hidden Ties that Bind: Slavery, wet-nursing and milk-kinship in Mauritania (Northwest Africa)

Abstract: In Mauritania, sharing a mother’s milk creates a kinship bond that is as strong and long-lasting as a blood relationship. It entails the same intimacies and responsibilities. But unlike most blood ties, milk-ties cross-cut class, historically making brothers and sisters of slaves and freeborn and, in contemporary times, creating networks among rich and poor. Milk kinship continues to shape what is understood as ‘family’. Yet these ‘ties that bind’ are all but invisible to outsiders. Today, as tradition and memory reside increasingly among a dwindling generation of elders, even young Mauritanians find themselves strangers to their own family history.

Ann McDougall is Professor of History in the Department of History, Classics and Religion at the University of Alberta. She is a founder and former Director of U of A's program in Middle Eastern and African Studies. Her research covers a wide range of topics in the social and economic history of Northwest Africa (southern Morocco and Mauritania) with a particular focus on labour, desert salts, slavery and women. She is currently researching a social history of workers in the Mauritanian iron ore industry with particular attention to ‘invisible people’ known as haratine (SSRHC 2018-22).

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