Honor and Personhood in Early Modern Mexico

Honor and Personhood in Early Modern Mexico
Author: Osvaldo F. Pardo
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2015-09-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472121200

Osvaldo F. Pardo examines the early dissemination of European views on law and justice among Mexico’s native peoples. Newly arrived from Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, mendicant friars brought not only their faith in the authority of the Catholic Church but also their reverence of the monarchy. Drawing on a rich range of documents dating from this era—including secular and ecclesiastical legislation, legal and religious treatises, bilingual catechisms, grammars on indigenous languages, historical accounts, and official reports and correspondence—Pardo finds that honor, as well as related notions such as reputation, came to play a central role in shaping the lives and social relations of colonists and indigenous Mexicans alike. Following the application and adaptation of European ideas of justice and royal and religious power as they took hold in the New World, Pardo sheds light on the formation of colonial legalities and long-lasting views, both secular and sacred, that still inform attitudes toward authority in contemporary Mexican society.

Betraying Dignity

Betraying Dignity
Author: Orit Kamir
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2019-10-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1683932048

What do medieval knights, suicide bombers and "victimhood culture" have in common? Betraying Dignity argues that in the second decade of the twenty-first century, individuals, political parties and nations around the world are abandoning the dignity-based culture we established in the aftermath of two world wars, less than a century ago. Disappointed or intimidated, many turn their backs on the humanitarian, universalistic culture that presumes our inherent human dignity and celebrates it as the basis of every individual's equal human rights. Instead, people and nations are returning to a much older, honor-based cultural structure. Because its ancient logic and mentality take new forms (such as social network shaming and certain aspects of "victimhood culture") -- we fail to recognize them, and overlook the pitfalls of the old honor-based structure. Narrating the history of honor-based societies, this book distinguishes their underlying principle from the post-WWII notion of dignity that underlies human rights. It makes the case that in order to revive and strengthen dignity-based culture, the concept of human dignity must be defined narrowly and succinctly, and enhanced with the principle of respect. Continuing its historical and cultural narrative, the book discusses contemporary phenomena such as al-Qaeda terrorists, shaming via social network, FoMO, and some features of the emerging "victimhood culture". The book pays homage to Erich Fromm's classic Escape from Freedom.

The Origins of Macho

The Origins of Macho
Author: Sonya Lipsett-Rivera
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2019
Genre: Machismo
ISBN: 0826360408

Lipsett-Rivera traces the genesis of the Mexican macho by looking at daily interactions between Mexican men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Production of Knowledge of Normativity in the Age of the Printing Press

The Production of Knowledge of Normativity in the Age of the Printing Press
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2024-01-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004687041

This volume explores the production of knowledge of normativity in the age of early modern globalisation by looking at an extraordinarily pragmatic and normative book: Manual de Confessores, by the Spanish canon law professor Martín de Azpilcueta (1492-1586). Intertwining expertise, methods, and questions of legal history and book history, this book follows the actors and analyses the factors involved in the production, circulation, and use of the Manual, both in printed and manuscript forms, in the territories of the early modern Iberian Empires and of the Catholic Church. It convincingly illustrates the different dynamics related to the materiality of this object that contributed to “glocal” knowledge production. Contributors are: Samuel Barbosa, Manuela Bragagnolo, Christiane Birr, Luisa Stella de Oliveira Coutinho Silva, Byron Ellsworth Hamann, Idalia García Aguilar, Pedro Guibovich Pérez, Natalia Maillard Álvarez, César Manrique Figueroa, Stuart M. McManus, Yoshimi Orii, David Rex Galindo, Airton Ribeiro, and Pedro Rueda Ramírez.

A Tale of Two Granadas

A Tale of Two Granadas
Author: Max Deardorff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2023-08-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009335456

In 1570's New Kingdom of Granada (modern Colombia), a new generation of mestizo (half-Spanish, half-indigenous) men sought positions of increasing power in the colony's two largest cities. In response, Spanish nativist factions zealously attacked them as unequal and unqualified, unleashing an intense political battle that lasted almost two decades. At stake was whether membership in the small colonial community and thus access to its most lucrative professions should depend on limpieza de sangre (blood purity) or values-based integration (Christian citizenship). A Tale of Two Granadas examines the vast, trans-Atlantic transformation of political ideas about subjecthood that ultimately allowed some colonial mestizos and indios ladinos (acculturated natives) to establish urban citizenship alongside Spaniards in colonial Santafé de Bogotá and Tunja. In a spirit of comparison, it illustrates how some of the descendants of Spain's last Muslims appealed to the same new conceptions of citizenship to avoid disenfranchisement in the face of growing prejudice.

Death in Old Mexico

Death in Old Mexico
Author: Nicole von Germeten
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2023-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009261525

An evocative history of colonial Mexico's 'crime of the century' and its lasting impact on the new Mexican nation in the nineteenth century.

Honor and Personhood in Early Modern Mexico

Honor and Personhood in Early Modern Mexico
Author: Osvaldo F. Pardo
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2015-09-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472119621

An examination of the concept of honor as essential to both colonial Spaniards and indigenous Mexicans

Being the Heart of the World

Being the Heart of the World
Author: Nino Vallen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2023-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009322079

Tells the story of New Spain's integration into the Pacific world and the impact it had on mobility and identity-making.

On the Lips of Others

On the Lips of Others
Author: Patrick Thomas Hajovsky
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2015-06-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 029276670X

Moteuczoma, the last king who ruled the Aztec Empire, was rarely seen or heard by his subjects, yet his presence was felt throughout the capital city of Tenochtitlan, where his deeds were recorded in hieroglyphic inscriptions on monuments and his command was expressed in highly refined ritual performances. What did Moteuczoma’s “fame” mean in the Aztec world? How was it created and maintained? In this innovative study, Patrick Hajovsky investigates the king’s inscribed and spoken name, showing how it distinguished his aura from those of his constituencies, especially other Aztec nobles, warriors, and merchants, who also vied for their own grandeur and fame. While Tenochtitlan reached its greatest size and complexity under Moteuczoma, the “Great Speaker” innovated upon fame by tying his very name to the Aztec royal office. As Moteuczoma’s fame transcends Aztec visual and oral culture, Hajovsky brings together a vast body of evidence, including Nahuatl language and poetry, indigenous pictorial manuscripts and written narratives, and archaeological and sculptural artifacts. The kaleidoscopic assortment of sources casts Moteuczoma as a divine king who, while inheriting the fame of past rulers, saw his own reputation become entwined with imperial politics, ideological narratives, and eternal gods. Hajovsky also reflects on posthumous narratives about Moteuczoma, which created a very different sense of his fame as a conquered subject. These contrasting aspects of fame offer important new insights into the politics of personhood and portraiture across Aztec and colonial-period sources.