Cleansing honor with blood
Subtitle: masculinity, violence, and power in the backlands of northeast Brazil, 1845-1889
By: Martha S. Santos
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Stanford, California
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780804774567
Copyright date: 2012
Subjects: Violence; Men; Machismo; Sex role; Masculinity; Social conditions; Power (Social sciences); Honor; History
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: A brief moment of prosperity : land, opportunity, and autonomy, 1845-70; title: Unruly soldiers and honorable providers : paradoxes of masculinity and state formation in the backlands, 1840s-89; title: Poor but respectable : community, family, and the gendered negotiation of daily life, 1845-89; title: A changing world : deprivation, dislocation, and the disruption of honorable masculinity, 1865-89; title: Masculinity challenged and affirmed : autonomous women, men, and violent patriarchy, 1865-89; title: Of courage and manhood : masculine spaces, violence, and honor, 1865-89.