Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856

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Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856

Sonya Lipsett-Rivera

The Mexican Experience Series

336 pages
11 illustrations, 1 map

Paperback

May 2012

978-0-8032-3833-6

$40.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

May 2012

978-0-8032-4033-9

$40.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

History is not just about great personalities, wars, and revolutions; it is also about the subtle aspects of more ordinary matters. On a day-to-day basis the aspects of life that most preoccupied people in late eighteenth- through mid nineteenth-century Mexico were not the political machinations of generals or politicians but whether they themselves could make a living, whether others accorded them the respect they deserved, whether they were safe from an abusive husband, whether their wives and children would obey them—in short, the minutiae of daily life.

Sonya Lipsett-Rivera’s Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750–1856 explores the relationships between Mexicans, their environment, and one another, as well as their negotiation of the cultural values of everyday life. By examining the value systems that governed Mexican thinking of the period, Lipsett-Rivera examines the ephemeral daily experiences and interactions of the people and illuminates how gender and honor systems governed these quotidian negotiations. Bodies and the built environment were inscribed with cultural values, and the relationship of Mexicans to and between space and bodies determined the way ordinary people acted out their culture.

Author Bio

Sonya Lipsett-Rivera is a professor of history at Carleton University. She is the author of To Defend Our Water with the Blood of Our Veins: The Struggle for Resources in Colonial Puebla and coeditor of The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations 000
Preface and Acknowledgments 000
1. Negotiating Daily Life 000
2. Space and Mexican Society 000
3. Behind Closed Doors 000
4. Beyond the Door 000
5. The Body in Daily Life 000
6. The Head, Honor, and Aggression 000
7. Power, Sex, Hair, and Clothes 000
8. Culture, Honor, and Gender in Mexico 000
Notes 000
Bibliography 000
Index 000

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