Recent research, however, has revealed great deal of diversity among slavery's forms and functions. In the ancient and non-Western world some slaves served as field laborers. But others served as sex objects in harems; as eunuchs; and as bureaucrats, doctors, soldiers. In the South, slavery's primary functions were economic. But in many ancient and non-western societies, slavery served psychological, religious, sexual, and honorific functions.

To encompass slavery's diversity, scholars today tend to define the institution culturally. Slaves, according to this view, are people totally subject to their owner's will. They belong only to their owner, who can subject them to sexual exploitation and cruel punishment, and hold over them the power of life and death. In addition, slaves were people who were cut off from their traditional culture and dishonored in a variety of ways (for example, by being branded, tattooed, or required to wear distinctive collars, clothing, or hair styles).

The most common form of dishonor is to disparage slaves' character and their intellectual capacities. Regardless of place, time, or the slaves' ethnicity, all societies have imposed certain common stereotypes on slaves--that they were licentious, childlike, lazy, irresponsible, and incapable of f

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