Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America

Sueann Caulfield

Description

This collection brings together recent scholarship that examines how understandings of honor changed in Latin America between political independence in the early nineteenth century and the rise of nationalist challenges to liberalism in the 1930s. These rich historical case studies reveal the uneven processes through which ideas of honor and status came to depend more on achievements such as education and employment and less on the birthright privileges that were the mainstays of honor during the colonial period. Whether considering court battles over lost virginity or police conflicts with prostitutes, vagrants, and the poor over public decorum, the contributors illuminate shifting ideas about public and private spheres, changing conceptions of race, the growing intervention of the state in defining and arbitrating individual reputations, and the enduring role of patriarchy in apportioning both honor and legal rights.Each essay examines honor in the context of specific historical processes, including early republican nation-building in Peru; the transformation in Mexican villages of the cargo system, by which men rose in rank through service to the community; the abolition of slavery in Rio de Janeiro; the growth of local commerce and shifts in women's status in highland Bolivia; the formation of a multiethnic society on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast; and the development of nationalist cultural responses to U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico. By connecting liberal projects that aimed to modernize law and society with popular understandings of honor and status, this volume sheds new light on broad changes and continuities in Latin America over the course of the long nineteenth century.Contributors. Jose Amador de Jesus, Rossana Barragan, Sueann Caulfield, Sidney Chalhoub, Sarah C. Chambers, Eileen J. Findley, Brodwyn Fischer, Olivia Maria Gomes da Cunha, Laura Gotkowitz, Keila Grinberg, Peter Guardino, Cristiana Schettini Pereira, Lara Elizabeth Putnam

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 08 juin 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822386476
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America

  

HONOR, STATUS, AND LAW IN MODERN LATIN AMERICA

Edited by Sueann Caulfield, Sarah C. Chambers, & Lara Putnam

   

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Typeset in Galliard by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

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Acknowledgments

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Introduction: Transformations in Honor, Status, and Law over the Long Nineteenth CenturyLara Putnam, Sarah C. Chambers, and Sueann Caulfield

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, ,  

Private crimes, public order: honor, gender, and the law in early republican PeruSarah C. Chambers

Community service, liberal law, and local custom in indigenous villages: Oaxaca, –Peter Guardino

The ‘‘spirit’’ of Bolivian laws: citizenship, patriarchy, and infamyRossana Barragán

Interpreting Machado de Assis: paternalism, slavery, and the free womb lawSidney Chalhoub

Slavery, liberalism, and civil law: definitions of status and citizenship in the elaboration of the Brazilian civil code (–)Keila Grinberg

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

Trading insults: honor, violence, and the gendered culture of commerce in Cochabamba, Bolivia, s–sLaura Gotkowitz

Sex and standing in the streets of Port Limón, Costa Rica, –Lara Putnam

Slandering citizens: insults, class, and social legitimacy in Rio de Janeiro’s criminal courtsBrodwyn Fischer

Courtroom tales of sex and honor:raptoand rape in late nineteenth-century Puerto RicoEileen J. Findlay

The changing politics of freedom and virginity in Rio de Janeiro, –Sueann Caulfield

     



Theplena’s dissonant melodies: leisure, racial policing, and nation in Puerto Rico, –sJosé Amador de Jesús

Prostitutes and the law: the uses of court cases over pandering in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the twentieth centuryCristiana Schettini Pereira

The stigmas of dishonor: criminal records, civil rights, and forensic identification in Rio de Janeiro, – Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha

Contributors

Index

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



This volume had its inception in a conference organized by Sueann Caul- field at the University of Michigan in . We are grateful to the institu- tions within the University of Michigan whose support made that initial conference possible, including the University of Michigan Law School; the Department of History; the Institute for Research on Women and Gender; the Humanities Institute; the International Institute; the Pro- gram in Latin American and Caribbean Studies; the Office of the Vice President for Academic and Multicultural Affairs; the Office of the Vice President for Research; the College of Letters, Science, and Arts; and the Rackham School for Graduate Studies. The editors are also grateful to the other institutions that have supported them as the joint project evolved in the following years, including the Department of History of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the Department of His- tory of the University of Minnesota; the Escuela de Historia, the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, and the Posgrado en Historia, all of the Universidad de Costa Rica; and the Department of History of the Uni- versity of Pittsburgh. Critical insights offered by participants at that first conference helped set the agenda for our subsequent work. For this we are grateful to Katherine Bliss, Jane Burbank, Arlene Díaz, John French, Donna Guy, Michael Heller, Aims McGuinness, Deborah Malamud, Richard Pildes, Karin Rosemblatt, Kristin Ruggiero, Rebecca J. Scott, and Heidi Tins- man as well as the authors whose chapters follow. The contributors to this volume showed flexibility, creativity, and patience as we worked to craft a collective work that would offer more than the sum of its parts.

Incisive comments from two anonymous reviewers for Duke University Press pushed us further toward that goal. We are also grateful to our families, especially our long-suffering spouses Elizabeth Martins, Gene Ozasky, and Mario Pérez. Seven chil- dren—Miriam (), Alex (), Gabriel (), Alonso (), Easton (), Joshua (), and Benicio ()—have grown up around this project. We might have finished this book more quickly without their arrivals, but it surely would have been poorer without the insights they have given us into the com- plexities of gender and the consequences of love. Finally, each of the editors would like to thank the other two. When we began this project we had no idea how far it would take us. Honing this volume together has been a fabulous intellectual challenge and a real pleasure throughout.

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Acknowledgments

Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America