Dissertation Information for Catherine Helen Komisaruk NAME: - Catherine Helen Komisaruk
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (2000)
ADVISORS: - Kevin Terraciano - James Lockhart
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Mary Yeager - Veronica Cortinez
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: Women and men in Guatemala, 1765--1835: Gender, ethnicity, and social relations in the Central American capital
Abstract: The dissertation represents a social history of Guatemala, particularly the capital city, in late colonial and early national times. Emphasizing gender within a broad analysis of society as a whole, the study focuses especially on the lower and middle economic rungs, and because of the availability of sources, mainly on people who were connected with Hispanic society. The work shows the forms of well-known social structures of the colonial era at a stage of late and rapid transition. Substantive chapters consider African slavery, free labor and enterprise, marriage and informal unions, and Indian labor for the Hispanic community.
Research involved close readings of several hundred documents, mostly in the General Archive of Central America. By tracing individuals and families through various types of records, notably court cases containing testimony of ordinary people, the dissertation portrays a range of lives in extraordinary detail, and it reveals some patterns that have not been studied before. It proved possible, for example, to reconstruct several family histories of African Guatemalans, enslaved and free, in greater depth than previous work on Spanish America has done.
During the period under study, forms of coerced labor were fading fast in favor of labor contracted through individual arrangements. The integration of Africans into Hispanized society had eroded the viability of chattel slavery. Obligatory labor by Indian communities was also receding and being transformed.
These transitions were part of a broader change in social and cultural identities. A certain sexual permissiveness fueled this change, yielding substantial ethnic mixing and out-of-wedlock births among all socioeconomic groups. Despite the restrictive formal ideologies that have dominated many understandings of marriage, gender roles, and sexuality in Latin America, in practice a wide range of behavior was accepted.
While challenging assumptions about marriage and households in Latin America, the work also presents new findings on women's labor in domestic service and other sectors, and ultimately suggests revised views of gender as it related to employment, sexuality, and family structures. The dissertation contributes to knowledge about Latin America, and to the histories of women and of the African Diaspora.
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MPACT Scores for Catherine Helen Komisaruk A = 0
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calculated 2008-09-15 11:01:46
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