Suchergebnisse

In recent years historians of Europe and North America have discovered the importance of the spoken word in past times and have explored the ways in which language reflects particular social contexts. Retrieving fragments of popular speech from police reports, court records, and other sources, these scholars have sketched colorful vignettes which reenact such mundane activities of daily life as a game of cards or an argument over a stray calf. Their work has shown that seemingly trivial face-to-face encounters offer valuable clues for understanding social hierarchies and community values of a given time and place. Abstract relationships of class, gender, and social rank take concrete form in the routine conversations of men and women in streets, taverns, and markets, as "ordinary" people tell us about the societies in which they lived—sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, but always in their own words. The historian of popular speech moreover recognizes that the social order, far from being static, remains subject to continuous modification not only by the powerful but also by those in subordinate positions, whose words and gestures may either reinforce or undermine accepted standards of behavior and social precedence.

Professor Carmagnani has identified major themes and tendencies that have characterized recent studies on the social history of colonial Mexico. He correctly observes that historians have paid closer attention to the connections between population and resources, to the differences among regions, and to the internal development of Indian society. Moreover, he explains how advances in demography, economic history, and ethnohistory have all contributed toward a continued shift in emphasis away from political or "institutional" perspectives.