O deslocamento de interesses da Índia para o Brasil durante a União Ibérica: mapas e relatos

This paper proposes the insertion of cartographic production about the Portuguese possessions into a wider context of interests and need for information experienced by the Hapsburgs during the Iberian Union (1580–1640). I focus on two documents, compiled as a result of two requests made by the monarchs who wished to learn about their domains in India and Brazil: the 1612 Livro que dá razão do Estado do Brasil, written by Captain Diogo Campos Moreno, with maps by João Teixeira Albernaz I, and the Livro das Plantas de todas as fortalezas, cidades e povoações do Estado da Índia oriental, dated 1635, by the official chronicler of the Estado da India, Antonio Bocarro, with city views usually attributed to Pedro Barreto de Resende.

These texts and maps show a shift of interests from India to Brazil. They incorporate the various aspects that the authors considered relevant, interesting or representative of the Portuguese presence in these spaces. At the same time, the royal orders that gave rise to these surveys bring some elements that give specificity to each region, but emphasize the effort to standardize the information and to ensure a common administration over different areas of the empire.     

Birthing modernity: spatial discourses of cesarean birth in São Paulo,Brazil

In this article, we explore the ways that spatial discourses inform women’s birth experiences, focusing in particular on urban Brazilian women’s experience of caesarean section. In particular, we draw on interviews conducted in São Paulo with 22 women and five doctors in order to analyse the ways the discourses of modernity, development and nationalism are drawn on and themselves constituted in the way that women narrate their birth experiences. We also explore the meanings that are given to these terms in women’s narrations in order to address the cultural specificity of the way that these discourses play out in the Brazilian context. We argue that spatial referents concretize discourses of modernity, and are employed in mothers’ and doctors’ birth narratives in order to give meaning to birth experiences. In particular, we find that these discourses provide a means of interpreting birth experiences in a positive way and providing spatialized subject positions which confer status and value to both people and places. In exploring these themes, we seek to further understandings of the ways that narratives of place help to frame and give meaning to women’s reproductive lives.     

Interpreting Rock-Cut Grave Cemeteries: The Early Medieval Necropolis and Enclosure of São Gens,Portugal

EXCAVATION AT SÃO GENS (Guarda district) in central Portugal has revealed an early medieval rock-cut grave cemetery and settlement, along with Roman and prehistoric evidence. The site presents an exceptionally rich palimpsest of archaeological monuments. This paper reviews the findings and seeks to address the problem of interpreting rock-cut grave cemeteries, by describing a spatial analytical methodology that draws on comparisons with early medieval cemeteries in England, as a means of enhancing the information deficit of such necropolises. In the light of these analyses, an interpretation of the São Gens site is offered in conclusion.     

En tiempos del condestable Dávalos: Enrique de Aragón,poeta quejoso en Crónica. Año de 1420, de Jerónimo de la Escosura

Infants of Aragon are very important figures in the history and literature of the nineteenth century, but it is rare that one of them, Don Enrique, is the protagonist. This work analyzes the romantic story Cronica. Año de 1420, published by Jerónimo de la Escosura in 1839. In it, Enrique de Aragón is a cunning courtier and a poet in love, and he manages to change history because he changes the story with his verses.     

‘It can be dangerous for the uterus’: hegemonic masculinity and cooperative recycling in São Paulo,Brazil

This study examines performative social relations, specifically the role of hegemonic masculinity in shaping gendered space. First, by drawing on personal experiences and qualitative data from my research in São Paulo, Brazil, I examine the most salient aspects of hegemonic masculinity in the lives of female recyclers. Second, I suggest that masculine domination is not simply something established by men which aims to oppress women, but hegemonic masculinities can be (re)produced by women. I affirm this notion by exploring the ways in which hegemonic masculinity and common perceptions of social roles, abilities, and inabilities are discursively (re)produced by female recyclers. In particular, I argue that exploring the subordinate position of women is a productive means to gain a deeper understanding of hegemonic masculinity, while also, the concept of hegemonic masculinity is an effective tool for understanding the subordinate role of women. My experiences with the recyclers provide a context through which the fluid, complex, and dynamic nature of hegemonic masculinity can be further revealed.     

Microanalytical study of copper ores from the Chalcolithic settlement of São Pedro (Portugal): Copper production in the south-western Iberian Peninsula

Copper ores recovered at the third millennium bce settlement of São Pedro, Portugal, were characterized by micro-Raman spectroscopy, micro-energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (micro-EDXRF) and micro-particle-induced X-ray emission spectrometry (micro-PIXE). The collection shows the common presence of secondary copper minerals (malachite, pseudomalachite and libethenite) combined with iron oxyhydroxides (hematite and goethite), while arsenic-rich minerals are absent and, therefore, can be excluded as the source of arsenical copper. Overall, these copper ores suggest a primitive technology involving the exploitation of the superficial zone of ore bodies and reliant on the fortuitous finding of arsenic-rich sources to produce the arsenical copper alloy frequently present among metallic collections of the Iberian Peninsula.     

Rethinking the ‘Atlantic Forest’ of Brazil: new evidence for land cover and land value in western São Paulo, 1900–1930

Historical geographies of environmental resources need reliable biophysical baselines. In this essay, I construct a vegetation baseline for early-twentieth-century southeastern Brazil using new empirical evidence. Analysis of land subdivision court proceedings and postmortem property inventories suggests a mosaic of semideciduous mesophytic forest, subtropical savanna (Cerrado) and dense arboreal savanna (Cerradão) in western São Paulo state, Brazil. The findings support the claims of botanists and biogeographers regarding the relationship between vegetation communities and chemical–physical soil characteristics. The idea of a mosaic of early-twentieth-century vegetation also provides the basis for questioning the ‘Atlantic Forest’ supported by Warren Dean's With Broadax and Firebrand. The conclusions raise the epistemological issue of how to reconstruct biophysical baselines.     

‘On a nos mots à dire’: Kanak Women's Experience of Bridewealth in Lifou

Bridewealth in Lifou cannot be discussed on its own; rather it should be considered within the plurality of ceremonial acts which are needed to legitimize a marriage as customary. What do these transactions mean? Where does women's agency lie? Through a longitudinal analysis of ethnographic materials from my fieldwork in Lifou, Loyalty Islands, I consider how Kanak women are engaged in and perceive these ceremonial and cultural processes through a declared women's perspective that highlights their ability to make autonomous choices in an open ended historical context. I argue that it is a case of ‘positive agency’. I emphasize that local categories (june hmala and wenehleng) which define specific moments in this process can be subsumed under the anthropological term ‘bridewealth’. Further, I examine the meaning of money in bridewealth and the fact that the monetary contribution keeps increasing, raising local concerns about the need to regulate the amount circulating in marriage exchanges and its dispersion. Furthermore in Lifou there is no indication that the assembling of the bridewealth by the grooms implies a commoditization and (later) exploitation of women.