Assertion Of Authority Research Articles

Making Data Work Count

In this paper, we examine the work of data annotation. Specifically, we focus on the role of counting or quantification in organising annotation work. Based on an ethnographic study of data annotation in two outsourcing centres in India, we observe that counting practices and its associated logics are an integral part of day-to-day annotation activities. In particular, we call attention to the presumption of total countability observed in annotation - the notion that everything, from tasks, datasets and deliverables, to workers, work time, quality and performance, can be managed by applying the logics of counting. To examine this, we draw on sociological and socio-technical scholarship on quantification and develop the lens of a 'regime of counting' that makes explicit the specific counts, practices, actors and structures that underpin the pervasive counting in annotation. We find that within the AI supply chain and data work, counting regimes aid the assertion of authority by the AI clients (also called requesters) over annotation processes, constituting them as reductive, standardised, and homogenous. We illustrate how this has implications for i) how annotation work and workers get valued, ii) the role human discretion plays in annotation, and iii) broader efforts to introduce accountable and more just practices in AI. Through these implications, we illustrate the limits of operating within the logic of total countability. Instead, we argue for a view of counting as partial - located in distinct geographies, shaped by specific interests and accountable in only limited ways. This, we propose, sets the stage for a fundamentally different orientation to counting and what counts in data annotation.

Scrutinizing the Myth of Kumunity: The Semiotics of the Philippines’ Pinoy Big Brother Season 10

In applying Roland Barthes' semiotic theory to the analysis of Pinoy Big Brother Season 10 (Dyogi, Katigbak, Vidanes & Andrada, 2021-2022), this study delves into the intricate layers of meaning embedded in the show's 'Kumunity' concept, a term created by the fusion of 'Kumu,' a social media entertainment app, and "community." The primary focus is on unraveling the myth that the 'kumunity' symbolizes within the broader context of the reality television landscape in the Philippines. The investigation meticulously scrutinized selected components of the show—images, music, and dialogues—to elucidate the orders of signification, exposing the nuanced and multifaceted meanings conveyed. The 'kumunity' is portrayed as mirroring a tangible community with shared goals among housemates, showcasing a cohesive objective reminiscent of a localized collective. However, beneath this surface portrayal, this study uncover a rich tapestry of implicit meanings. These include subtle assertions of authority and power dynamics, the reinforcement of cultural nuances, the elevation and glorification of resilience as a virtue, and instances of disunity within the overarching support system. The study, through extensive analysis, goes beyond the apparent and reveals the intricate web of hidden ideologies within the signs presented in Pinoy Big Brother Season 10. It sheds light on the subtle yet impactful societal messages that permeate the realm of reality television, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the show's influence on cultural perceptions and dynamics. Keywords: Kumu, kumunity, Pinoy Big Brother, Roland Barthes, semiotics.

Schools of clerks, schools of knights: John Grandisson and Hugh de Courtenay’s French correspondence, 1329–40

Abstract The private letters within the Register of John Grandisson (bishop of Exeter, 1327–69) provide a fascinating insight into the intellectual climate of his episcopate, and attest to his strained relationship with the immensely important local magnate Hugh de Courtenay. Based on a re-examination of the manuscript Register (now held at the Devon Heritage Centre), this article offers the first modern edition and translation of a series of exchanges between the two men during Grandisson’s episcopate. Grandisson’s replies represent an assertion of clerical authority, as the two men fought over what was – in one case, literally – contested terrain.

Parental Psychological Control and Adolescent Academic Achievement: The Mediating Role of Achievement Goal Orientation.

This study examined the multiple mediating roles of achievement goal orientation between three parental psychological control (PPC) strategies and adolescents' academic achievement. The study sample consisted of 2613 Chinese middle school adolescents (52.6% boys) who were followed for one and a half years; they completed questionnaires on PPC (including love withdrawal, guilt induction, and authority assertion), achievement goal orientation (involving the mastery approach, the performance approach, and performance-avoidance goals), and academic achievement. We found that (1) the direct effects of the three strategies on academic performance differed, with love withdrawal directly and negatively predicting adolescents' academic achievement and guilt induction and authority assertion not being significant direct predictors. (2) The mediating role of achievement goal orientations differed across the psychological control strategies. Specifically, love withdrawal led to adolescents' academic achievement through their performance-approach goal orientation, performance-avoidance goal orientation, and mastery goal orientation. Moreover, guilt induction and authority assertion had impacts only on adolescents' performance-approach and performance-avoidance goal orientations. This study highlights the negative impact of love withdrawal on adolescents' internal motivation and academic achievement by warning parents not to use this strategy to influence their children's thoughts and feelings.

The Sufi Who Was a Sayyid: Muḥammad Ḥusaynī Gesūdarāz’s Assertions of Spiritual Authority

Abstract In the context of contested succession within a silsila (lineage) of sufis, this paper studies Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusaynī Gesūdarāz’s (d. 1422) recourse to a familial genealogy in order to claim the status of a pīr or sufi master, while attempting to entrench his legacy in Gulbarga where he emigrated to from Delhi after the incursions of Timur (d. 1405). As he arrived in the Deccan at the turn of the fifteenth century, Gesūdarāz used his kinship with the Prophet and particularly his identity of sayyid (a descendant of the Prophet through Ḥusayn) as a persuasive device, to set himself apart from other sufi shaykhs in the area who claimed an equivalent spiritual genealogy. The case of Gesūdarāz reveals a societal pattern wherein the identity of sayyid was gaining new traction, and relational ties were evoked not only as a means of establishing an identity as part of a community but also to supersede others who made the same claim. Kinship was a device through which Gesūdarāz staked his claim to authority, and it was also a mechanism that he and his family utilized to cement their hold on the Muslim community of Gulbarga.

In/formal reappropriations: Spatialised needs and desires in residential alleys in Melbourne, Australia

This paper engages in critical debate with urban informality in interstitial urban spaces through the lens of micro-scalar spatial practices motivated by everyday needs and desires. The aim is to examine the generative potential of small-scale reappropriations to change the functions, meanings and governing policies of undervalued urban spaces. An empirical focus is taken on residential alleys in inner-city neighbourhoods of Melbourne, Australia. Remnants of 19th-century sanitation and drainage infrastructure, these alleys are now underdetermined spaces of manifold functions and meanings. Drawing from extensive fieldwork documentation and interviews, this study maps and interrogates the interplay of formal and informal spatial practices. Formal practices, driven by assertion of authority rather than vision for public space, operate like Bourdieu’s habitus. Informal practices, driven by everyday needs and desires, have a teleoaffective dimension that can modify the social field in which these dispositions are formed and thereby alter habitus.

Power Over Architecture

The notion of power, characterized by its ability to wield influence over others as guided by its holder’s intention, is intertwined with a spectrum of social control mechanisms encompassing force, coercion, manipulation, seduction, and authority. Malay sultanate palaces in West Kalimantan were a form of architecture hinggil (high) culture. The historical development of Malay ethnics in West Kalimantan is linked to power dynamics. This study investigates the historical development of Malay Sultanate palaces’ spatial configurations and architectural designs. It focuses on the colonial era, during which power dynamics exerted significant influence. This paper aims to ascertain the extent to which power dynamics have shaped the architectural aspects of the Malay Sultanate palaces. The analysis highlights the architectural objects and employs a historical methodology with diachronic and synchronic analyses to discern the patterns of power prevalent throughout the Sultanate’s history. Power is palpably demonstrated in effecting substantial transformations in the intent and function of the sultanate palaces, often through manipulation, seduction, and assertion of authority. These power dynamics are exemplified through architectural modifications, i.e., the controleur strategic placement and fort within the Sultanate’s vicinity, interior space reconfigurations, alterations in functionality, and symbolic embellishments reflecting the Sultanate’s authority. The colonial administration from the Dutch regime embarked on fortifying its dominion through modifications to the functional underpinnings of the palace chambers. The Dutch authority’s influence facilitated the consolidation and validation of their control. These mechanisms engendered compliance and acquiescence to the dominion of the ruling party through latent means.

Early Modern Exemplars: Reading Strategies and the Assertion of Readerly Identity and Authority in the Life-writing of Mary Ward, Dionys Fitzherbert and Elizabeth Isham

Early Modern Exemplars: Reading Strategies and the Assertion of Readerly Identity and Authority in the Life-writing of Mary Ward, Dionys Fitzherbert and Elizabeth Isham

Authorities at play in Indigenous language reclamation: tensions and possibilities in the Yucatan Peninsula

Abstract Language revitalization efforts have been critiqued for creating and reproducing linguistic, epistemological, and pedagogical hierarchies that might run counter to a community’s needs and interests. Drawing on a seven-year ethnographic and collaborative research with the Maya cultural promoters of the Caste War Museum in Tihosuco, Mexico, we describe the dynamics of our Maya language reclamation partnership focusing on the creation of bilingual comic books and summer workshops for children. These experiences show a slow but steady language reclamation approach based on the concern for younger generations to feel comfortable to claim their right to speak and learn Maya and on their fondness for Maya language and culture. We argue that the construction, negotiation, and assertion of linguistic and pedagogical authority among all participating actors is central to reclamation projects, and that these processes are impacted by outsider researchers-collaborators in ways that can support but also potentially harm these language efforts. This paper sheds light on the various tensions lived in long-term language reclamation projects, recognizing the need for outsider researchers to turn our reflexive gaze inwards and consider how we can bring to the fore practices we can celebrate as well as address and transform those that cause discomfort and uncertainty.

PROBLEMATIC SMARTPHONE USE IN ADOLESCENTS: PARENTAL STRUCTURE AND PARENTAL PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTROL AS PREDICTORS

The use of smartphones in adolescents can negatively impact their daily lives. When adolescents’ ability to control smartphone use is low, they could experience problematic smartphone use behavior (PSU). By internalizing control, parents play a crucial role in enhancing adolescents' self-control on smartphone use. Based on the controlling component of parenting, there are two types of parental control: parental structure and parental psychological control. Previous studies have found a relationship between parental psychological control and PSU. However, studies investigating the relationship between parental structure and parental psychological control simultaneously with PSU are limited. This study is important since parents found practicing those two types of parental control simultaneously. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of parental structure and psychological control on adolescents' problematic smartphone use. 219 adolescents aged 12-18 (M = 14.49 years) completed the Indonesian version of the Parental Structure Scale, Parental Psychological Control Scale, and Mobile Phone Problematic Use Scale questionnaires. Stepwise regression analysis shows that only parental psychological control predicts the increase of problematic smartphone use in adolescents. Our finding suggested that the type of parental control that emphasizes authority assertion, love withdrawal, and guilt induction is ineffective in decreasing problematic smartphone use in adolescents.

Parental Psychological Control and Addiction Behaviors in Smartphone and Internet: The Mediating Role of Shyness among Adolescents.

Parental psychological control has been found to be a vital familial factor that is closely related to adolescents' addiction behaviors with regard to smartphones and the internet. However, the underlying mechanisms of these associations are less clear. The aim of the present study was to examine whether shyness mediated the relationships between parental psychological control and these two addiction behaviors. A positivist paradigm was used in the present study. The questionnaires (parental psychological control, shyness, and smartphone and internet addiction questionnaires) were used to collect data from a sample of 1857 Chinese adolescents (961 female, 896 male) in junior and senior middle schools. Descriptive statistics as well as correlation and mediation tests were employed to analyze the data. We observed that adolescents with siblings showed a higher level of internet addiction than those with no siblings. Moreover, three dimensions of parental psychological control were positively associated with addiction behaviors. The following analyses displayed that the correlation between authority assertion and smartphone addiction was greater than that between authority assertion and internet addiction. Subsequently, shyness was significantly positively related to parental psychological control and addiction behaviors. Importantly, we found that the relations between the three dimensions of parental psychological control and the addiction behaviors concerning smartphones and the internet were partially mediated by shyness. This study contributes to our understanding of how parental psychological control predicts high levels of adolescents' addiction behaviors surrounding smartphones and the internet.

„Du bist einfach ein Schönling/ein Prachtkerl!“ – zur Kontrastivität des expliziten Kompliments in der männlichen Kommunikation

AbstractIn this paper, the explicit compliments within male gender-homogeneous groups are examined in a contrastive way. There are some findings in gender linguistics that notice a low frequency of this speech act in male groups and ascribe certain thematic priorities to them. Although it has been postulated that compliments men exchange have more to do with the evaluation of their performance and authority assertion, [the] male complimenting behavior is also seen as highly ambivalent. The following study examines whether there are certain differences and similarities in the frequency, subject matter, grammatical and phonological design of explicit compliments in [the] groups of males with different cultural backgrounds.

‘It all comes from me’: Bahu Begam and the making of the Awadhnawabi, circa1765–1815

AbstractThis article examines the durable, yet largely overlooked, claims of Bahu Begam (1727–1815) to dynastic wealth and authority in the Awadhnawabi(1722–1856), a North Indian Mughal ‘successor state’ and an important client of the East India Company. Chief consort (khass mahal) to Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula (r. 1754–75) and mother to his successor Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula (r. 1775–97), Bahu Begam played a well-documented role in the regime’s tumultuous politics, particularly during Warren Hastings’s tenure as the Company’s governor-general (1773–85) and his later parliamentary impeachment. But despite her prominent political influence, little attention has been paid to the substance of her persistent claims to proprietorship over revenue rights and the immense fortune in her custody, as well as her broader assertions of authority over Awadh’s male rulers. Taking those claims seriously, this article contends that the begam rooted her arguments in notions of natural deference to maternal authority and generational seniority, evolving dynastic traditions of co-sharing sovereignty and fiscal resources, and her particular history as a principal financier of the Awadh regime. In so doing, the article argues that the begam’s claims reflect the shifting conceptual language of late-Mughal Persianate political discourse and the ambivalent position of elite women as dynastic financiers and state-builders in early colonial South Asia.

“It should be a constant reminder”: Space, meaning and power in post-liberation Africa

Much of contemporary Eastern and Southern Africa is governed by former national liberation movements, each having won power after lengthy and punishing insurgencies. To varying degrees, these post-liberation governments have since commemorated their respective struggles through inscribing the landscape with a range of spatial projects – from museums and statues to vast memorial complexes. This study explores the provenance, significance, and meaning of this spatial work, and its relationship to the broader politics of post-liberation Africa. Drawing on 3.5 years of fieldwork undertaken across five countries and numerous memorialization sites, we argue that, with some exceptions, these spatial acts have been undertaken with limited consultation or debate outside of ruling elites, who approach struggle memorialization as a normative and political imperative. For these actors, these spaces are not necessarily intended to persuade domestic audiences of the “rightness” of the struggle or of the party's legitimacy to govern per se. Instead, they offer an assertion of authority, not a dialogue. This, we suggest, aligns with these governing movements' general – totalising – political mindset, whereby ensuring the continued centrality and commemoration of the struggle, and of key figures and leaders within it, is a self-evident obligation rather than a matter for wider reflection and debate.

Celeste Parrish and Educational Reform in the Progressive-Era South by Rebecca S. Montgomery

Reviewed by: Celeste Parrish and Educational Reform in the Progressive-Era South by Rebecca S. Montgomery Sarah Case Celeste Parrish and Educational Reform in the Progressive-Era South. By Rebecca S. Montgomery. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 237. Paper, $30.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7693-1; cloth, $47.50, ISBN 978-0-8071-6978-0.) In this well-researched book, Rebecca S. Montgomery employs the life of educator and reformer Celeste Parrish as a lens through which to analyze changes in gender relations, education, and politics in Virginia and Georgia between the Civil War and World War I. Montgomery makes a compelling case for Parrish's significance and her contribution to the education of southern women, as well as to expanding opportunities for women educators. Born in 1852 in southern Virginia into a family of tobacco growers and small-scale slaveholders, Parrish was orphaned by 1863 and began teaching a few years later. As Montgomery shows, the demographic and economic changes of Reconstruction pushed many white women of Parrish's background into paid employment, especially as teachers, and yet they found their own education inadequate to prepare them for this work. A new opportunity came in 1869 with the Republican-backed Virginia state constitution that included a provision for a universal public education system, a reform that Montgomery notes linked the expansion of education for Black women and men to that of white women. For Parrish and other single white women, it offered a chance to attend a public normal school and new possibilities for employment. Despite the opening of the normal school and her securement of a position at Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Parrish continued to face discrimination in education and professionally. Shut out of university-level education in her home state and with the need to remain employed in order to support an extended family, Parrish used summer breaks and semester leave to attend the University of Michigan and then Cornell University (from which she graduated in 1896). Despite the difficulties, Parrish found the academic rigor of these institutions thrilling and was especially drawn to the field of psychology. She then attended the University of Chicago for graduate work, studying with John Dewey and meeting the Progressive women associated with Hull House. Her years in Chicago solidified her commitment to the Social Gospel, the new social science, and Progressive reform. In 1901, increasingly resentful about the lower pay given to female faculty and other discriminatory practices, Parrish left Randolph-Macon Woman's College to take a position teaching psychology and pedagogy at the coeducational Georgia State Normal School in Athens. Although a popular mentor and an effective supervisor of an affiliated model school, Parrish continually clashed with male leadership, often over Parrish's support for Black education. The conflict entwined support for Black education and support for white women's professional opportunities. Montgomery astutely notes that although the hostile [End Page 579] racial climate of the early 1900s made even moderate support for interracial cooperation controversial, at heart the dispute was over Parrish's authority as a woman and her unwillingness to defer to male colleagues or otherwise conform to gender norms. Because of ongoing hostility from the leadership of the school for her assertion of authority, Parrish created an alternative network in women's clubs in Georgia, which proved essential in her later career. After she was dismissed from her teaching position in 1911, Governor Hoke Smith appointed her to a position overseeing rural schools. She stayed in that position until her death in 1918. Although attentive to the context of racial politics in Georgia, the book could more fully develop race as a theme; in particular, it might have engaged in a more nuanced analysis of Parrish's racial beliefs and her racialized gendered identity. On the whole clearly written and thoughtfully argued, the book makes a compelling case for the importance of Parrish and contributes to the history of southern education and especially white women's centrality to the expansion of post–Civil War education. Sarah Case University of California, Santa Barbara Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

The Draining of the Fens: Projectors, Popular Politics, and State Building in Early Modern England by Eric H. Ash (review).

Reviewed by: The Draining of the Fens: Projectors, Popular Politics, and State Building in Early Modern England by Eric H. Ash Robert Markley (bio) The Draining of the Fens: Projectors, Popular Politics, and State Building in Early Modern England By Eric H. Ash. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. Pp. 296. In his 1704 work The Storm, a text that describes the devastation of the extratropical hurricane that struck southwestern England in November 1703, Daniel Defoe reminds his readers that "'tis not many Ages since these Countries [parts of Norfolk, Cambridge, Suffolk, Huntingdon, Northampton, and Lincolnshire] were universally one vast Moras or Lough, and the few solid parts unapproachable" (G. Strawbridge, 1704, p. 17). Defoe's characterization of the eastern fenlands of England as they existed "not many Ages past" rests on a chain of associations that encouraged his readers to view wetlands with horror. For centuries, the fenlands in eastern England frustrated efforts to extend networks of communication and transportation, as well as legal and financial control over land and people who often resisted metropolitan authority. For Defoe and his contemporaries, the draining of the fens in the seventeenth century remained a milestone of economic and even climatological progress—a large-scale reclamation project that had made the land more fertile and more conducive to good health and had stabilized property relations and extended state authority. Draining the fens, one of the largest engineering undertakings in seventeenth-century Europe, took place over decades and, according to its supporters, demonstrated that private investment in combination with the legal and financial support of the Crown could—at least in theory—remake a malarial-ridden landscape into a verdant, orderly, and profitable countryside. Eric H. Ash's compelling study traces the history of this project beginning in the 1570s, when draining the fens on a massive scale first began to take shape as a policy at Elizabeth's court, as would-be projectors and investors argued that their often-hazy ideas would be an unalloyed boon to agriculture, the sociopolitical order, Crown authority, and commercial development. In providing the first full-length history since H. C. Darby's classic The Draining of the Fens (1940), Ash brings together political, economic, engineering, and environmental history in enlightening ways. By the early 1600s, English and Dutch projectors had displaced cottagers and started digging channels to redirect water flows but experienced as many failures as successes. Ash is particularly adept at describing the complexities of these efforts and their unintended consequences. In the 1650s, the draining of the Great Level of the Fens finally was completed under Cromwell, after much expense, radical disruptions to traditional lifestyles, and a good deal of human suffering. Ash suggests that the persistence of these drainage projects over different regimes and many decades reflects the ideological [End Page 857] and sociopolitical assumptions about agricultural "improvement" that characterize sixteenth- and seventeenth-century attitudes toward wetlands. The ultimate success of projectors in transforming hundreds of thousands of acres into arable land came with myriad sociopolitical, economic, and environmental costs; in turn, these conflicts reflected the larger clash of interests that led to the English Civil War. The great virtue of Ash's study is that its detailed archival research shapes a powerful narrative about the ways that drainage projects disrupted traditional (and what we might now call—with caveats—sustainable) uses of the fenland's resources in the interests of economic profit and assertions of the nation-state's authority. Draining the fens inevitably led to conflicts between inhabitants of these wetland areas and agents of the Crown, provoking political and legal debates about the authority of the Crown to seize land, displace inhabitants, and undertake large-scale engineering efforts without the consent of those who made their living off the land. If the meandering streams and routinely submerged areas of the fens supported abundant wildlife and small-scale livestock operations, they also frustrated the nation-building goal of transforming "one vast Moras" into arable land. The concerns voiced by Defoe about agricultural productivity and profit that were the hallmarks of British efforts to colonize distant lands in North America had their origins in the internal colonization of the fenlands. Ash does...

How policy actors assert authority in the governance of food marketing policies

The regulation of unhealthy food marketing is a highly contested space that involves a diverse range of actors and institutions. There is a paucity of research on the strategies used by the different actors to influence these policies. This study examined the use of authority by different regulatory actors to influence food marketing policies. We conducted semi-structured interviews with (N = 24) government, industry, civil society and technical experts involved in the regulation of food and beverage marketing in Australia. We identified five types of authority: institutional, delegated, expert, principled and capacity-based authority. Actors from the advertising, food and media industries claim more authority than technical experts, civil society, and government actors, suggesting that industry actors have multiple pathways to influence policy. The industry's claims of delegated and institutional authority are highly contested by civil society, technical experts, and state/territory government actors and recognised by federal government actors. Claims of circumscribed institutional authority are common among federal government actors such as the National Department of Health, Australian Media and Communications Authority and Food Standards Australia New Zealand. The assertions of authority observed in this study highlight the fragmented manner of the Australian food marketing regulatory system and have implications for which actors should be held accountable for the current challenges in the governance of food marketing policies.

“If We Changed Clothes, Sir, We Could Get Things Back to Normal”

“If We Changed Clothes, Sir, We Could Get Things Back to Normal”

Off the Rails: The Evolution of the General Conference’s Assertion of Unconstitutional Authority to Make Binding Declarations of Church Doctrine

ABSTRACT Contrary to widespread beliefs and practice, the text of the Constitution of The United Methodist Church, illuminated by the well-documented intent of its framers, establishes that the denomination’s General Conference lacks authority to make binding declarations of church doctrine. Resolute adherence to the constitutional provisions that bar the General Conference from defining church doctrine continued until in 1968, when the General Conference authorized appointment of a Theological Study Commission to review and report on the church’s doctrinal statements. Thereafter, in two subsequent General Conferences (1972 and 1988), the delegates voted to include expansive narratives on church doctrine in the denomination’s Book of Discipline, effectively normalizing the Conference’s unconstitutional intrusion into doctrinal matters, including its relatively recent votes to make it a “chargeable offense” to engage in conduct the General Conference has “declared” to be “incompatible with Christian teachings.”

The 1624 Tumult of Mexico in Perspective (c. 1620–1650): Authority and Conflict Resolution in the Iberian Atlantic

Angela Ballone's book is an example of how a specific case can offer a new historiographical perspective. Among Ballone's main contributions is her emphasis that the assertion of royal authority was the primary expression of the spread of a common legal culture in the Iberian Atlantic. The 1624 tumult in Mexico City and its resolution constituted a critical and radical example of Spanish American elites' strength, but this strength was always circumscribed within the framework of respect for the king's authority as the source of all rights. This allows us to discard the traditional anachronistic theses about the opposition between creoles and Iberians and about the weakness of the royal authority during the seventeenth century.Another central contribution of the book is its attention to the apostolic character of the church's defense and the role of the two Mexico City archbishops involved in the crisis triggered by the 1624 uprising. Chapter 5’s second section persuasively demonstrates the degree to which the sources of law (doctrine, legislation, jurisprudence, custom) supported the positions held by the representatives of both royal and ecclesiastical authority. Thus the Marquess of Gelves, as well as his respective predecessor and successor as viceroy, the Marquess of Guadalcázar and the Marquess of Cerralvo, defended the preeminence of the viceroy by pointing to the realm of royal powers. However, the arguments of Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna and his successor, Francisco Manso y Zúñiga, showed the malleability of canon law for defending ecclesiastical prerogatives and invoking for archbishops greater legitimacy, as representatives of the king's priestly character and as depositaries of the apostolic tradition.In this sense, Ballone's treatment of the Mexican archbishops' actions confirms the desire of New Spain's diocesan prelates for preeminence. As pointed out by Óscar Mazín, Pérez de la Serna and Manso y Zúñiga provided precedent for an episcopacy in northern Spanish America faced with the greater power wielded by the viceroys of Peru, the most famous of such prelates being Pedro Moya de Contreras and Juan de Palafox y Mendoza. This aspect of the 1624 conflict and its resolution is central to Ballone's perspective, since if the crown never again used the real audiencia to substitute for a viceroy in New Spain, there were occasions when bishops exercised viceregal authority on an interim basis or by appointment: examples of this include the governments of Marcos de Torres y Rueda, Diego Osorio de Escobar y Llamas, Payo Enríquez de Rivera, and Juan de Ortega y Montañés.Ballone makes an extraordinary contribution in documenting the constitution and functioning of a junta del tumulto that worked until 1648 within the Madrid court. The meticulous attention to Mexican affairs among the members of the Councils of Castile and the Indies who constituted that extraordinary committee shows the extent to which the tumult had judicial consequences for the ministers and royal officials involved and the importance of Mexican affairs in the royal court. Especially revealing is Ballone's discovery of the sentence leveled against the relatives of the Marquess of Gelves. The junta's lengthy deliberations reveal the profound impact of events in the Indies on the royal court's decisions. Ballone raises interesting questions about how government and justice were modeled in the monarchy's various latitudes.These central contributions of documentation and interpretation underpin Ballone's balanced treatment of the historiography. Her generous review includes the unpublished theses that at the time constituted her monograph's antecedents. This book on the 1624 tumult also fits with Ballone's work on Juan de Solórzano Pereira, legal literature in Spanish America, and the legal aspects of the labor conditions in Indigenous societies. With subtlety and sobriety, Ballone has contributed to renewing the Atlantic history promoted by the historians of the British Empire and the European Hispanists. The book under review draws on the great lines of interpretation established by, among others, Horst Pietschmann, John Elliott, David Armitage, and Harald Braun. Simultaneously, Ballone's book complicates the multiplicity of problems that the Atlantic scale entails to place the making of royal authority in local settings, in consonance with the local-global explanations of imperial phenomena, while still admitting that Madrid was the court and Mexico the seat of a distant viceroyalty. With this, Ballone distances herself from the imperialistic character attributed to Atlantic history and instead deals with the specific aspects of the continuities within the Iberian worlds, particularly the cocreation of a common legal culture between rulers and ruled.In the finest tradition of Atlantic history, Angela Ballone's monograph about the 1624 tumult of Mexico City brings us a broader understanding of how royal authority was made in New Spain and Spanish America.