Title: Cleansing honor with blood : masculinity, violence, and power in the backlands of northeast Brazil, 1845-1889 /
Authors: Santos, Martha S. 1969-
Publisher: Stanford University Press,
Year: 2012
Subjects: Masculinity Brazil Ceará (State) History; Men Brazil Ceará (State) History; Machismo Brazil Ceará (State) History; Violence Brazil Ceará (State) History; Power (Social sciences) Brazil Ceará (State) History; Honor Brazil Ceará (State) History; Sex role Brazil Ceará (State) History; Ceará (Brazil : State) Social conditions
Abstract: This critical reinterpretation of male violence, patriarchy, and machismo in rural Latin America focusses on the lives of lower-class men and women, known as sertanejo/as, in the hinterlands of the northeastern Brazilian province of Ceará between 1845 and 1889. Challenging the widely accepted depiction of sertanejos as conditioned to violence by nature, culture, and climate, the book argues that their concern with maintaining an honourable manly reputation and the use of violence were historically contingent strategies employed to resolve conflicts over scant resources and to establish power over women and other men.
Contents: A brief moment of prosperity : land, opportunity, and autonomy, 1845-70 -- Unruly soldiers and honorable providers : paradoxes of masculinity and state formation in the backlands, 1840s-89 -- Poor but respectable : community, family, and the gendered negotiation of daily life, 1845-89 -- A changing world : deprivation, dislocation, and the disruption of honorable masculinity, 1865-89 -- Masculinity challenged and affirmed : autonomous women, men, and violent patriarchy, 1865-89 -- Of courage and manhood : masculine spaces, violence, and honor, 1865-89.