bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Corporate Responsibility and the Base of the Pyramid Proposition
Authors: Arnold Denis G. , Speights Sabrina L.
Published: November 2019

The base of the pyramid (BoP) proposition holds that corporations can profit from providing goods and services to the global poor while simultaneously improving the lives of the impoverished. Critics of the BoP proposition argue that, at best, a select few corporate initiatives can achieve these simultaneous goals, and, at worse, such initiatives will result in harmful exploitation in the guise of responsible corporate behavior. This chapter provides an historical overview of the original BoP proposition, summarizes criticisms the proposition has received, describes empirical research on BoP initiatives, and details examples of successful ventures. The BOP proposition is situated in theories of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethics in order to differentiate between exploitative and empowering BoP ventures and to emphasize the broader imperative to consider both the economic and the ethical dimensions of successful BoP ventures.
Bringing Together the Big and the Small
Authors: DeBerry-Spence Benét , Torres Lez Trujillo , Hinson Robert Ebo
Published: November 2019

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have the potential to influence job and business formation in the Africa through Corporate Social Responsibility Entrepreneurship (CSRE) programs and support. Surprisingly, the best approaches and/or means to support, track, and report these efforts remain unclear. Through a review of twelve prominent companies, this chapter expands the current literature on CSR by providing a broader view of MNCs role in promoting entrepreneurship priorities in Africa. Five major types of CSRE that current initiatives fall under are identified, along with the intended contributions, beneficiaries (e.g. micro-entrepreneurs, SMEs, women), and ways in which MNCs track and report impact. While MNCs efforts are laudable for their depth and breadth, major challenges remain to ascertain the real impact of these priorities and actions on the entrepreneurial landscape. The authors discuss these and suggest important considerations for MNC continued and improved support of African entrepreneurship and African entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship by and for Disadvantaged Populations
Authors: Renko Maija , Freeman Michael J.
Published: November 2019

We address social responsibility through the lens of entrepreneurship. We first describe difficulties faced by specific disadvantaged populations, such as women, minorities, immigrants, and people with disabilities. We then describe how models used by social enterprises—that is, non-profit and for-profit ventures with a primary goal of helping a disadvantaged group—can help. Social responsibility is at the core of social enterprises that provide services and products for the disadvantaged, while entrepreneurship within disadvantaged populations is an often overlooked element in the discussion of CSR and entrepreneurship. Though they may not have explicitly altruistic goals, members of disadvantaged populations engaging in self-employment and micro-enterprises use their work to offset disadvantage, which is implicitly socially responsible. This inclusive view of entrepreneurship by the disadvantaged, combined with the unconflicted CSR of entrepreneurship for the disadvantaged, provides a basis for researching entrepreneurship that is more concerned with positive outcomes than negative barriers.
Stakeholder Management
Authors: Harrison Jeffrey S. , Wicks Andrew C.
Published: November 2019

Scholars and practitioners have acknowledged the practical relevance of stakeholder theory as it has been applied to management. This chapter provides a brief foundation for understanding the basic principles of stakeholder management and some of its best known tools, including the development of an enterprise strategy, identification and prioritization of stakeholders, and measurement of the value firms create with and for stakeholders. Then insights are shared about implementation of stakeholder management based on interviews with high-level executives from a variety of well-known companies. It was found that stakeholder principles have been applied in a variety of ways and under various labels. The chapter ends with a list of eight important questions to advance research on stakeholder management.
The Consequences of Mandatory Corporate Sustainability Reporting
Authors: Ioannou Ioannis , Serafeim George
Published: November 2019

A key aspect of the governance process inside organizations and markets is the measurement and disclosure of important metrics and information. In this chapter, we examine the effect of sustainability disclosure regulations on firms’ disclosure practices and valuations. Specifically, we explore the implications of regulations mandating the disclosure of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information in China, Denmark, Malaysia, and South Africa using differences-in-differences estimation with propensity score matched samples. We find that relative to propensity score matched control firms, treated firms significantly increased disclosure following the regulations. We also find increased likelihood by treated firms of voluntarily receiving assurance to enhance disclosure credibility and increased likelihood of voluntarily adopting reporting guidelines that enhance disclosure comparability. These results suggest that even in the absence of a regulation that mandates the adoption of assurance or specific guidelines, firms seek the qualitative properties of comparability and credibility. Instrumental variables analysis suggests that increases in sustainability disclosure driven by the regulation are associated with increases in firm valuations, as reflected in Tobin’s Q. Collectively, the evidence suggest that current efforts to increase transparency around organizations’ impact on society are effective at improving disclosure quantity and quality as well as corporate value.
Mightier than the Sword
Authors: Waldron Theodore L. , Navis Chad , Markman Gideon D.
Published: November 2019

This chapter examines how, as activist organizations pressure firms to act in more socially responsible ways, the activists influence managers’ perceptions of their firms’ existing practices. We conduct two studies to explain how, using rhetoric, activists attempt to convince managers that their firms’ practices constitute inappropriate behaviors. The first study discerns the types and functions of the rhetorical strategies used by activists, and the second study discerns the sequence, interplay, and implications of these strategies when used during activists’ campaigns in industries. Our findings indicate that activists enact three rhetorical strategies through an intricate process, the essence of which involves using managers’ own cognitive structures to problematize their firms’ practices. Overall, by specifying activists’ methods for facilitating managerial perception change, we enrich interdisciplinary research on activism in industries.
Corporate Volunteering
Authors: Blakeley Karen
Published: November 2019

This chapter provides a clearer and more balanced understanding of both the benefits and limitations of corporate volunteering, along with possible directions for future research. First, background is provided through an outlining of definitional issues, some statistics on the growing influence of corporate volunteering, and the nature and evolution of current corporate volunteering offerings. Corporate volunteering’s historical association with broader, societal critiques of the role of business in society is also discussed. Second, the strong influence of business case discourse on the focus of academic research is reviewed, along with the subsequent normative assumption that corporate volunteering is overwhelmingly “good” and should be promoted more widely. Third, the literature is critiqued for its unexamined problems, unheard voices, and unquestioned social and political agendas. The chapter concludes by suggesting avenues for future research that will address these gaps.
Daoist Meditation
Authors: Komjathy Louis
Published: November 2019

Meditation has been and remains a central practice in the Daoist (Taoist) tradition. This chapter examines Daoist meditation, often referred to as dazuo (“engaging in sitting”) and shouyi (“guarding the One”) in Chinese, from the Later Han dynasty to the present. It provides a general overview of the five major forms of Daoist meditation, namely, apophatic meditation, ingestion, visualization, inner observation, and internal alchemy. Ingestion (fuqi) and visualization (cunxiang) were first systematized in the early medieval period. Inner observation (neiguan), a Daoist adaptation of Buddhist insight meditation (vipassanā), became a central practice during the Tang dynasty. Internal alchemy (neidan) developed during the late Tang dynasty and early Song dynasty. Following this period, apophatic meditation and internal alchemy became the two dominant forms of Daoist meditative praxis. In addition to providing socio-historical background information, this chapter discusses the technical specifics of each type of Daoist meditation, including major texts and informing views.
Autonomy as a Goal of Psychotherapy
Authors: Biegler Paul
Published: November 2019

Personal autonomy describes the exercise of self-determination through informed and rational decisions that reflect an agent’s authentic values. The nexus between autonomy and psychotherapy is broad, with both respect for client autonomy through informed consent, and promotion of client autonomy through therapy itself representing key instances of the significance of autonomy in the consulting room. While inadequate disclosure of information poses a major threat to personal autonomy, so too do unjustified paternalism, coercion, and the injudicious use of therapeutic privilege. The capacity of psychotherapy to promote client autonomy, evidenced by more effective decision-making during periods where the risk of recurrent illness is high, is argued to be a key advantage of psychotherapy over treatment with medication alone. Ultimately, enhanced autonomy is a goal of treatment grounded in a more defensible conception of well-being for people with psychological disorder and, it is concluded, should be sought specifically through psychotherapy.
The Ethics of Informed Consent for Psychotherapy
Authors: McKean Alastair J. , Trachsel Manuel , Croarkin Paul E.
Published: November 2019

Informed consent, enshrined in many of the codes of conduct of psychology and psychiatry professional organizations, is an integral component behind the ethical practice of psychotherapy. Foundationally, informed consent respects patient autonomy and should be a knowledge sharing process that allows patients greater agency and improved alliance with their clinician. Psychotherapy differs from medical and surgical interventions in that it is a longitudinal, collaborative, and interpersonal treatment. As many psychotherapists are not trained in traditional medical models of care, a medically based framework for informed consent may not be as familiar and appropriate for psychotherapy. These nuances do not diminish the need for informed consent but rather emphasize the distinctiveness of psychotherapy and necessity of adapting to this treatment modality. In this chapter, the informed consent process for psychotherapy is examined, detailing its historical development, legal and ethical foundations, as well as the subtleties and challenges regarding implementation.
Psychotherapist Self-Disclosure
Authors: Barnett Jeffrey E.
Published: November 2019

Psychotherapist self-disclosure is addressed as a potentially important psychotherapeutic technique. Different types of self-disclosure are explained, to include deliberate self-disclosure, unavoidable self-disclosure, and accidental self-disclosure, illustrating their potential value and benefits to clients and to the psychotherapy process. Self-disclosure is examined as a boundary issue and ethics issues relevant to the use of self-disclosure are addressed. Illustrative examples are provided and a decision-making process is provided to assist psychotherapists to utilize self-disclosure with clients in an ethically appropriate and clinically effective manner. Relevant factors to be considered in the decision-making process are reviewed to include cultural factors, treatment setting, and the client’s treatment plan. Ethical challenges relevant to having an online presence are addressed and potential pitfalls for psychotherapists to be cognizant of are shared. Recommendations for the ethical and clinically appropriate use of self-disclosure are provided.
Psychotherapeutic Futility
Authors: Geppert Cynthia
Published: November 2019

The formal concept of futility has been inchoately explored in psychotherapeutic scholarship and only recently has a small body of work focused primarily on anorexia nervosa and schizophrenia emerged. Therefore, this chapter must be considered an exploratory investigation of the meaning of the concept of futility in the practice of psychotherapy. The exploration will begin with a tracing of the intellectual history of the concept and a review of attempts to develop definitions and typologies of futility. It will then outline the fundamental ethical arguments debated in the medical futility literature with reference to anorexia nervosa. Medical, philosophical, legal, and ethical critiques of the idea of futility and its use in medicine and psychiatry will be examined. Finally, a tentative initial effort will be made to apply the ethical principles and values inherent in the debate regarding these discussions of futility to psychotherapy.
Ethical Issues in the Psychotherapy of High Risk Offenders
Authors: Adshead Gwen
Published: November 2019

This chapter discusses the ethical dilemmas that arise in the psychotherapy of high risk offenders, i.e., those offenders who have caused serious harm to others and who may be at risk of doing so again. These offenders may be detained in prison or in secure psychiatric facilities; but wherever they are, they are expected to take part in activities that will reduce their risk to others as well as improve their mental health. The chapter starts by assuming that these “activities” are intended to bring about a change of mind in offenders. It explores the ethical issues raised by this assumption; and reviews previous work covering related themes. It concludes with discussion of the four ethical issues in therapy with offenders: (a) autonomy and coercion, (b) welfare and outcomes, (c) justice, and (d) disclosure of risk and confidentiality.
The Ethics of Mindfulness-Based Interventions: A Population-Level Perspective
Authors: Schmidt Andreas T. , Savić Lovro
Published: November 2019

When applied in population-level contexts, such as schools or business, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) find themselves in a crossfire between two different kinds of criticisms. On one side, some worry that MBIs’ normative commitments might be “too thick,” worrying that MBIs might come with a particular conception of the good, and significant ethical and religious commitments. On the other side, some worry that contemporary MBIs are ethically “too thin,” as they shed too many of their original Buddhist ethical and soteriological goals. In this chapter, it is argued that contemporary MBIs should remain normatively thin, as that makes them more suitable for population-level contexts. Against “thickness worries,” it is argued that MBIs are compatible with liberal respect for autonomy, as the benefits are often autonomy-enhancing, which makes MBIs potentially valuable across a broad range of conceptions of the good. The second line of argument is developed through a discussion of MBIs in schools.
Technological Change and Financial Innovation in Banking
Authors: Frame W. Scott , Wall Larry , White Lawrence J.
Published: November 2019

Financial intermediation has changed dramatically over the past thirty years, due in large part to technological change. The chapter first describes the role of the financial system in a modern economy and how technological change and financial innovation can affect social welfare. We then survey the empirical literature relating to several specific financial innovations, broadly categorized as new production processes, new products or services, or new organizational forms. In each case, we also include examples of significant FinTech innovations that are transforming various aspects of banking. Drawing on the literature on innovations from the 1990s and 2000s informs what we might expect from recent developments.
Hardy Perennials
Authors: Caprio Gerard , Honohan Patrick
Published: November 2019

In the long history of systemic banking crises—including, but not limited to, the Global Financial Crisis—the worst cases have been caused or at least severely exacerbated by what may be called bad banking and bad policies: those that permitted or encouraged excessive risk-taking and even “looting” of other people’s money. With each crisis there is an inevitable chorus of calls for more official prudential regulation and supervision to prevent a recurrence. Empirical evidence suggests that policy is best directed toward ensuring a dynamic approach to regulation focusing on the information that is being disclosed to market participants, the degree of market discipline on the behavior of bankers, and the incentives in the financial system, including those for regulators.
Banking Globalization
Authors: Buch Claudia M. , Delong Gayle L.
Published: November 2019

The financial crisis has renewed interest in the globalization of the banking industry, the patterns of entry into foreign markets, and the effects of complex banking organizations. There is a rich body of literature on international banks, which has recently been expanded by the improved theoretical modeling of the international banking firm and by focusing on implications for (systemic) risk. In this chapter, we focus on three main questions. First, what are the determinants of cross-border entry through acquisitions of commercial banks? Second, what are the effects of cross-border entry on complexity and the efficiency of banks? Third, what are the risk effects of international bank acquisitions, in particular with regard to systemic risk? We begin with a brief summary of the stylized facts, and we conclude with implications for researchers and policymakers.
Commercial Banking and Shadow Banking
Authors: Boot Arnoud W. A. , Thakor Anjan V.
Published: November 2019

We review in this chapter the market developments related to the increasing blurring of the boundaries between banks and financial markets, and the literature associated with this. While traditionally viewed as competitors, institutions and markets are now viewed as engaging in three forms of interaction: competition, complementarity, and co-evolution. The blurring boundaries between banks and markets are evidenced by the growth in shadow banking and P2P lending. We discuss how this has led to economic gains as banks become increasingly dependent on and intertwined with markets. But we also point to a dark side of this intertwining, which is the consequent increase in systemic risk and financial institution fragility. The increased importance of “gatekeepers,” like credit rating agencies, and the implications of these developments for the regulation of banks and markets, are also discussed.
Banking in Africa
Authors: Beck Thorsten , Cull Robert , Valenzuela Patricio
Published: November 2019

This chapter takes stock of the current state of banking systems across Sub-Saharan Africa and discusses recent developments, including innovations that might help Africa leapfrog more traditional banking models. Using an array of different data, the chapter documents that African banking systems are shallow but stable. African banks are well capitalized and over-liquid, but lend less to the private sector than banks in non-African developing countries. African enterprises and households are less likely to use financial services than their peers in other developing countries, although there has been significant progress over the past decade. The chapter also describes a number of financial innovations across the continent that can help overcome different barriers to financial inclusion and have helped to expand the bankable and the banked population. The chapter ends with discussing current challenges for policymakers and academics, including the lack of (data on) long-term finance and the supervisory challenges stemming from increasing cross-border banking in the region.
Banking in China
Authors: Klapper Leora , Soledad Martínez Pería María , Zia Bilal
Published: November 2019

The Chinese financial sector has grown at an impressive pace over the last decade, and its banking sector is now the largest in the world. China has also experienced a credit boom, which makes the need to better understand how the Chinese financial sector functions even more important. In this chapter, we first describe the structure and performance of the financial sector in China, focusing largely on banks. Next, we discuss how regulators’ efforts to slow the growth of bank intermediation have been accompanied by rapid growth in shadow-banking products, as banks try to circumvent limits on their ability to grow. Finally, we document China’s progress in expanding consumer access to formal financial services and track the recent expansion of FinTech, especially digital payment products.
Banking in the Transition Countries of Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union
Authors: Fungáčová Zuzana , Hasan Iftekhar , Solanko Laura , Wachtel Paul
Published: November 2019

This chapter explains the functioning of the banking sectors in the European transition countries. First, we reflect on the thirty-year history of transition banking from the creation of banking institutions out of the planning structures through the effect of the global financial crisis and the post-crisis challenges. We show that experiences across the region are by no means uniform, both with respect to the path since transition started and the current state of the industry. Second, we focus on the state of the banking industry when transition is finalized and show the similarities and differences between banking in this region and elsewhere. Finally, we analyze financial inclusion as one of the critical issues that affects contemporary banking in the region.
Banking in Australia and New Zealand—Geographic Proximity, Market Concentration, and Banking Integration
Authors: Moshirian Fariborz , Wu Eliza
Published: November 2019

This chapter focuses on the Australian and New Zealand (NZ) banking industry. Australian and New Zealand banks have undergone significant growth and challenges in the past decade. Australian banks weathered the Great Recession from 2008 and still recorded strong profits and minimal losses while other global banks failed internationally. To understand why this might be, we examine the composition of the closely integrated banking sectors in Australia and NZ, their respective performance, capital levels, and some defining regulatory reforms that have particularly shaped the Australian banking system since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Corporate Governance and Culture in Banking
Authors: Hagendorff Jens
Published: November 2019

Banks differ from non-financial firms. These differences affect the manner of agency conflicts between the various bank stakeholder groups compared with non-financial firms. However, the main corporate governance arrangements used in the banking industry to mitigate these agency conflicts are largely similar to those of non-financial firms. A case in point is executive compensation. No other major industry has less equity on the balance sheet than banking. However, executive pay in banking is linked to shareholder wealth just as in other industries thus exacerbating existing incentives for bank managers to shift risk. Further, the governance arrangements in banking make the corporate culture prevailing in banks an important subject to study. This chapter reviews the literature on corporate governance in banking with a focus on those aspects of corporate governance in which banks (should) differ from non-financial firms, that is, executive compensation, the composition of the board of directors, and culture in banks. The chapter encourages a more profound rethink of the corporate governance of banks.
Creation and Regulation of Bank Liquidity
Authors: Bouwman Christa H. S.
Published: November 2019

Liquidity creation is a core function of banks and an important economic service to the economy. This chapter discusses two distinct notions of bank liquidity creation developed in the theoretical literature—funding liquidity creation and improved risk sharing for risk-averse depositors. It also examines the empirical literature on bank liquidity creation. The focus is on the economics of bank liquidity creation, both in the traditional relationship banking context and in the shadow-banking context. This chapter discusses related prudential regulation issues, pertaining mainly to capital requirements and liquidity requirements, as well. It provides a historical overview, starting in the early 1800s and ending with Basel III and the Dodd–Frank Act. It identifies open research questions regarding both capital requirements and liquidity requirements.
Native Informants and the Limits of Portuguese Dominion in Late-Colonial Brazil
Authors: Langfur Hal
Published: November 2019

Throughout its colonial history, much of Portuguese America’s sparsely populated territory remained incompletely colonized, the province of autonomous and semiautonomous Indians. In a policy shift after 1750, the implications of which remain poorly understood, the Portuguese Crown intensified efforts to control Brazil’s many inland frontiers. This chapter focuses on one of these regions, the rugged mountains separating the captaincies of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. Exploring relations between Portugal’s centralizing transatlantic state and the zone’s indigenous peoples, it emphasizes the importance of territorial intelligence gathered from the Coroado, Coropó, and other Indians by officials who dispatched a military expedition to counter the flow of contraband gold and diamonds. The chapter argues that the indigenous occupants of this strategic region largely defined the limits of state power while securing their own survival and independence.
Borderlands of Knowledge in the Estado da Índia (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)
Authors: Županov Ines G.
Published: November 2019

Indian historiography commonly treated Iberian imperial presence in South Asia in the early modern period as a precocious and unsuccessful effort before that of the British Empire. The Portuguese (and Spanish) Estado da Índia had indeed been an exemplary “borderlands” empire. However, its territorial marginality and the ultimate failure to expand did not hamper it from acquiring a prodigious “empire of knowledge.” By centering on three categories of knowledge—medico-botanical, linguistic, and historical—this article addresses the ways of knowing, collecting, and crafting information in transcultural dialogue with local communities. It focuses on mapping the major sites and intersections through which the knowledge circulated in the Portuguese imperial global networks. In addition, this article argues that these devalued, “borderlands” epistemologies inspired in important ways both British Empire and the major disciplinary fields (linguistics, area studies, history, Orientalism) engaged in reflecting on South Asia.
Tierra Incognita
Authors: Refugio de la Torre Curiel José
Published: November 2019

This essay analyzes cartographic materials and geographic descriptions of New Spain’s northwestern borderlands elaborated by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It explains the meaning of these documents as expressions of the aspirations of these religious institutions to extend their projects of territorial occupation toward that frontier; suggesting that far from simple descriptions of regions inhabited by Pima and Yuma Indians and other peoples between the northern region of the province of Sonora and the banks of the Gila and Colorado rivers, these testimonies were inspired by the need to demonstrate the viability of establishing mission towns and Spanish occupation along those frontiers.
Colonization, Mediation, and Mestizaje in the Borderlands of Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil
Authors: Missagia de Mattos Izabel
Published: November 2019

This research brings together the colonization of existing indigenous peoples in the Sertões do Leste (the eastern backlands of Brazil) and the formation of a national Brazilian narrative. Violence, extermination, and slavery became frequent in the area dating from the Carta Régia of 1808, which declared a “Just War” against the “Cannibal Botocudos.” Following the Law of Catechesis of 1845, such measures were replaced by the discourse of “civilization” through mestizaje as an efficient way of liberating land from the various indigenous groups present in the area, articulated through interrelated socio-symbolic networks. The issue would be widely discussed in official reports written by missionaries and politicians. In contrast to the contemporary national narratives of Argentina and Uruguay, constructed on the expansion of territories and the decimation of “savages” for the advancement of their borders, the experience of “pacification” of the eastern backlands of Brazil’s interior underpins the incorporation of the idea of mestizaje as a narrative of national “civilization.”
Shaping an Inter-Imperial Exchange Zone
Authors: Rupert Linda M.
Published: November 2019

This chapter explores how people on the ground—and in the water—created a vibrant inter-imperial space in the southern Caribbean, linking the small Dutch entrepôt of Curaçao and the nearby hinterland of Spanish Venezuela. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a variety of colonial denizens developed dynamic transcolonial networks, which were influenced by intertwined imperial political, religious, and economic frameworks. These links built on indigenous ties between the island and the mainland that dated from pre-Columbian times and were further shaped by the area’s changing human geography in the wake of European colonization. While to some extent the inter-imperial space between Dutch Curaçao and Spanish Venezuela reflects unique historical circumstances, it raises several intriguing issues that are applicable to the study of borderlands more generally, particularly related to the role of smuggling, maritime spaces, and the complex relationship between overarching structures and human agency.
The Virgin of El Zape and Jesuit Missions in Nueva Vizcaya
Authors: Bargellini Clara
Published: November 2019

This study focuses on the sculpture of the Virgin Mary at El Zape, a former early Jesuit mission site, in Durango, Mexico. It begins with the examination of the written sources, dating from 1617 to the eighteenth century, within their historical contexts. These sources are compared to one another and to the appearance of the sculpture today, as disclosed during a recent minor restoration. The result is a deeper historical and esthetic understanding of the texts and of the sculpture, which began as a miraculous missionary companion and patron for the Jesuits, with connections to representations ranging from Flemish prints to eighteenth-century paintings. The missionary image was eventually incorporated into the category of popular devotions within the bishopric of Durango.
Trans-Imperial Interaction and the Rio de la Plata as an Atlantic Borderland
Authors: Prado Fabrício
Published: November 2019

The Rio de la Plata was one of the most disputed regions in the Atlantic world among Portuguese, Spanish, and indigenous groups, and it was an area of interest for the British and French. Despite geopolitical disputes over the north bank of the Rio de la Plata, Portuguese Colonia do Sacramento, and Spanish Buenos Aires and Montevideo formed an important port complex where powerful networks of trade, religion, and family connected subjects of the Spanish and the Portuguese empires. Colonia do Sacramento and Montevideo became important Atlantic ports that connected the region to Europe, Africa, and other regions in the Americas. This article examines the social, economic and political dynamics in the Rio de la Plata, focusing on the role of port cities as centers of trans-imperial interaction that not only connected subjects of both Spanish and Portuguese empires but also linked the region to the broader Atlantic world.
Frontier Missions in South America
Authors: Wilde Guillermo
Published: November 2019

This article examines the establishment of frontier missions in South America, with emphasis on the strategies used in the interactions between Jesuit missionaries and indigenous peoples. It explores three foundational aspects of the organization of the missions: impositions, adaptations, and appropriations. Imposition refers to actions undertaken by missionaries within the framework of colonial regulations, in collaboration with members of the indigenous elite. Adaptation refers to adjustments made to the models that were imposed on local settings, through the incorporation of native elements that did not threaten the imposed structure of the reductions. Appropriation refers to indigenous responses to colonial impositions and the development of autonomous native practices. These three factors contributed to the development of new perceptions of space and time, as well as subjectivities that were specific to the frontier missions of South America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Autonomous Indian Nations and Peacemaking in Colonial Brazil
Authors: Roller Heather F.
Published: November 2019

During the late eighteenth century, a range of autonomous Indian nations in Brazil forged more peaceful relationships with the Portuguese without submitting to colonial governance. This indicates the need to look beyond colonial policies of “pacification” to understand how these peace processes unfolded. This chapter builds on recent scholarship on indigenous peacemaking in colonial Latin America and presents new findings on the aims and perspectives of two important groups in western and northern Brazil (the Mbayá-Guaikurú and the Mura). These cases reveal that independent Indians had their own ideas of how peace should be made and what it should entail, compelling even the most cynical colonial officials on the ground to make concessions and compromises. The chapter also draws on the recent literature on peace agreements between Indians and Spaniards to provide a comparative perspective on the ways in which peace was made (and unmade) in the late colonial Iberian borderlands.
Conflict, Alliance, Mobility, and Place in the Evolution of Identity in Portuguese Amazonia
Authors: Sommer Barbara A.
Published: November 2019

This chapter reveals how the vast waterways of equatorial South America facilitated exploration and inter-ethnic contact that led to conflict as well as cooperation and migration. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Portuguese explorers, slave traders, and missionaries moved progressively upriver, descending natives to missions and settlements. Some Indian and African runaways subsequently escaped to riverine forests to evade exploitation. This chapter presents new evidence showing that runaways to remote tributaries would become the supposedly uncontacted “tribes” of twentieth-century ethnographers. Against the backdrop of the eighteenth-century demarcation of Spanish and Portuguese imperial boundaries, the occupation of geographic and ecological zones defined social and cultural identities.
Crafting Landscapes in the Iberian Borderlands of the Americas
Authors: Radding Cynthia
Published: November 2019

This chapter takes its inspiration from environmental history and cultural geography, bringing together the scholarship to date on the changing environments of North and South America. Its point of departure is the production of social space, in the Lefebvrian sense, and the cultural crafting of landscapes by both indigenous and colonial societies. Human societies in the Americas confronted a multitude of contrasting environments in deserts, forests, grasslands, river valleys, and mountainous slopes; over centuries, through different modes of appropriation and production, distinct cultures and communities altered those environments, creating new versions of “nature” in the landscapes of their fabrication and renewal. Bridging the late pre-conquest and early colonial developments, this chapter will present the salient features of landscape creation, destruction, and renewal through horticulture, hunting, gathering, industry, and evolving patterns of settlement. Attention will also be paid to the meanings ascribed to landscapes and natural features by indigenous and colonial actors, underscoring the close association of environment and culture in the historical development of colonial societies in Iberian America.
Labyrinths of Mestizaje
Authors: Deeds Susan M.
Published: November 2019

In the wake of the silver discoveries that fueled New Spain’s early growth, Spain deployed diverse strategies to incorporate the northern borderlands of Nueva Vizcaya. This article elaborates how natives responded to these efforts from the late sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and how a multiracial society evolved in the process. Decentering the mission as the primary agent of change, the article examines a larger dynamic of cultural and biological mixing across missions, haciendas, presidios and towns in which ethnic identities, subsistence patterns, cultural beliefs, and gender relations changed over time in conditions of violence and migration. Social and spatial mingling across ethnic groups was rife with possibilities for the subversion of the social separation and compliance that rulers tried to impose. In labyrinths of mestizaje, women and men—Indians, Europeans, Africans, and their progeny—quarreled, battled, procreated, and interacted in work, trade, leisure, sickness, witchcraft and spiritual activity.
Fluctuating Frontiers in the Borderlands of Mesoamerica
Authors: Berrojalbiz Fernando , Hers Marie-Areti
Published: November 2019

The formation of northern New Spain was anticipated by numerous events that took place centuries before the first Europeans set foot in what would later become the North of Mexico and the US Southwest: successive expansions of Mesoamerica, substantial population movements of various northern peoples, and consequent ethnic encounters, exchanges, conflict, and continual reconfigurations. For the Mesoamerican groups that took part in the conquest and settlement of northern New Spain, their participation signified the recovery of the lands of their distant ancestors from the legendary Chicomoztoc. Some northern groups confronting the Spanish, on the other hand, had only arrived in that contested zone a few generations before, initiating a long process of transformations that gave rise to the extreme cultural diversity that characterized the extensive North of New Spain.
Musical Cultures of the Ibero-American Borderlands
Authors: Mann Kristin Dutcher , Davies Drew Edward
Published: November 2019

Music and dance were key elements of culture in the Ibero-American borderlands that served to reflect, shape, and express cultural and political realities. From colonizers’ perspectives, proficiency in Western musical practices equaled acculturation to Catholic norms and civilized, sedentary society. At the same time, performances of music and dance articulated changing native identities. There was no single borderlands music or dance, and evidence in the form of music manuscripts, eyewitness accounts, and musical instruments remains fragmented and scattered among periods and locations. Practices such as liturgical chant, bell ringing, religious songs, communal dance, orchestral music, and other musical arts formed integral parts of mission and urban life in the borderlands throughout the colonial period. Whereas the interior church spaces such as Durango Cathedral, were dominated by performative music genres, music making in rural and urban exterior spaces included participatory activities that produced diverse ambient soundscapes.
Introduction
Authors: Levin Rojo Danna A. , Radding Cynthia
Published: November 2019

Borderlands arise where two or more spheres of hegemony that claim jurisdiction over resources and people limit each other and often overlap, where two or more groups of people with different cultures and modes of life intermingle, and where the prevailing ecological conditions challenge particular forms of human life. Drawing on theorists from historical sociology, geography, anthropology, and spatial history, the editors and contributors to this volume understand borderlands as diffuse spaces of contestation, adaptation, and admixture that are produced through historical processes in specific times and places. Providing a broad approach to borderlands applicable to time periods predating the modern nation-state and areas not standing at the limits between two constituted polities, this perspective addresses indigenous America and the character of early Iberian empires. We advance the interrelated notions of successive frontiers and internal borderlands to address these territorial and cultural processes over time and in different continental and maritime regions.
Indigenous Diaspora, Bondage, and Freedom in Colonial Cuba
Authors: Yaremko Jason M.
Published: November 2019

From the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, thousands of indigenous peoples from a spectrum of cultures embarked, voluntarily and involuntarily, on journeys from their homelands in the continental Americas to the Caribbean: as traders, refugees, immigrants, laborers, and as slaves. Cuba became the principal destination for a massive influx of indigenous peoples from New Spain and, later, the independent republic of Mexico. This chapter explores the fluid, multidimensional dynamic of diasporic indigenous peoples in their attempts to negotiate an existence in a territory to which they were forcibly relocated. It examines the historical, social, political, and intercultural development of forced indigenous labor in Cuba along with the complex and nuanced ways in which freedom and bondage overlapped. It investigates contending spheres of power encompassing states, settler populations, and indigenous and other subaltern peoples to discuss the implications of this Caribbean borderlands dynamic in the context of transitional zones and transculturation.
Patterns of Food Security in the Pre-Hispanic Americas
Authors: Bushnell Amy Turner
Published: November 2019

A group achieves food security when its sustenance requirements are in equilibrium with its sustainable resources, that is, when its habitats, fixed or seasonal, guarantee a nutritionally adequate diet year-round to enough individuals to keep its population constant. By pursuing a mixture of subsistence strategies, the group assures itself that if its primary routine should fail, a secondary routine, or back-up cycle, will be available to take its place. This chapter examines technologies of hunting and gathering, extensive and intensive agriculture, and food preparation perfected in the Americas over thousands of years, with the object of identifying those patterns of material culture and resource management that allowed many Pre-Hispanic peoples to endure periods of food shortage and avoid “state capture,” neither producing a surplus that could be seized nor asking for a handout with strings attached. The same patterns that kept these groups free in the era of native empires would enable their descendants to remain autonomous in the era of overseas empires, on the edges or in the interstices of the Iberian borderlands.
The Bible and the Sources of Rabbinic Law
Authors: Shveka Avi
Published: November 2019

There are two aspects to the question of the relation between biblical law and rabbinic halakhah: the historical one, which refers to the continuum between the two cultures, and the creative one, which refers to the conscious efforts of the rabbis to interpret the biblical text and to deduce halakhic details from it. This chapter deals primarily with the second aspect, and surveys the state of research of the literature of halakhic midrashim—focusing on their division into two tannaitic schools—as well as of the place of midrash in other rabbinic compilations, notably the Babylonian Talmud. Following this survey the chapter discusses several relevant historical questions, especially the question whether midrash is the true source of halakhah, or just a method to artificially link pre-existing halakhot to the biblical text. Based on the view that the nature of midrash is the impetus to extract from the biblical text answers to all halakhic questions which bother the reader, whether or not they are actually referred to in the text, the chapter suggests several arguments in favor of the former view. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the great historical question of the continuity between biblical law and rabbinic halakhah. The chapter proposes studying halakhah from a longue durée perspective, which will enable us to approach this question on an evidential basis, and sketches some of the methodologies and research developments needed to advance this goal.
“An Eye for an Eye” and Capital Punishment
Authors: Huffmon Herbert B.
Published: November 2019

“An eye for an eye” is a famous summary statement regarding appropriate punishment for a wrong, especially personal injury. It has been variously understood as requiring equivalent, even duplicate, punishment or as setting a limit on punishment, and has even been labeled primitive or barbaric. In the biblical world it primarily represents the notion that the crime and the punishment should be commensurable and establishes a basis for negotiation. In the case of false witnessing, the biblical and ancient Near Eastern legal tradition emphasizes that a lying witness should receive the punishment that would have been determined for the accused. In ancient Israel, capital punishment is generally more restricted than among its neighbors. In the Gospel tradition this principle of commensurability is turned upside down, shifting the emphasis to how one should not lie, whether under oath or not, and should positively respond even to forceful actions or demands.
Ethical and Moral Duties in Rabbinic Judaism
Authors: Schofer Jonathan Wyn
Published: November 2019

The modern study of ethics and moral duties in Rabbinic Judaism has its foundation in the examination of halakhah and covenant. Recent scholarship of the last twenty-five years has emphasized that rabbinic sources situate law in relation to exegesis and narrative, and the well-known distinction between law (halakhah) and non-legal materials (aggadah) has been examined both for its significance in culture and identity creation and for its intellectual and moral features. A renewed approach to ethics and moral duties in Rabbinic Judaism studies halakhah with attention to the intertwining of textual and literary forms with conceptual content, and with attention to political and social contestation, as well as identity formation, in the articulation of legal standards. The domain of law overlaps with that of morality in several elements of halakhah, including ritual practice, taxation and charity, relations between men and women, and responses to damages.