Hernando De Research Articles

La catedral de Granada: arquitectura y simbolismo. En torno al significado del templo siloesco

Por lo general, las interpretaciones sobre los significados que encierra la capilla mayor de la catedral de Granada han girado en torno a su carácter funerario. Atendiendo a la condición jerónima de Pedro Ramiro de Alba, el arzobispo granadino que encargó el proyecto a Diego Siloe, este artículo propone una lectura de la misma en clave de eclesiología eucarística que permite articular esos significados en una visión integradora, de la que participan tanto la arquitectura como los elementos litúrgicos y decorativos, singularmente las vidrieras. En este contexto, los escritos de Hernando de Talavera, monje jerónimo y primer arzobispo de Granada, se revelan como una fuente importante y poco atendida por cuantos hasta la fecha se han ocupado de estudiar la catedral.

Finding Better Words: Markets, Property Rights, and Resources

To use or conserve environmental and natural resources effectively is complex. Many economists believe that institutional solutions built around markets and property rights can help improve results. This approach addresses what Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto termed the “missing lessons of U.S. history” – institutions whose designers may not have understood the outcomes that would occur, but the results were generally beneficial. However, technical economic analysis generally fails to persuade many at the policy level. Adding a focus on the practicality of solving issues by voluntary action will enrich the policy discussions. To do so requires economists to provide concrete examples of how to resolve environmental issues. In this Article, we contrast the narratives given to support markets and property rights and state-centered solutions. The analysis suggests how to frame issues to increase opportunities for market and property rights solutions to be more broadly considered. In short, economists must stop talking past the dedicated environmentalists who have learned to communicate effectively with the public but often lack practical tools that economists can provide, Better narratives allow economists to join the public conversation successfully.

Improvised Cities: Architecture, Urbanization, and Innovation in Peru

The spectacular growth of Lima's informal barriadas and pueblos jóvenes has long occupied a prominent place in the scholarly and popular imagination of Peru's twentieth-century history. For many, the image of Lima as a city of unconstrained and uncontrolled informal settlements was a singular symbol of what José Matos Mar dubbed the desborde popular that had overwhelmed Peru by the 1980s. Helen Gyger's new book, Improvised Cities, acknowledges the often-chaotic nature of twentieth-century urban Peru while also drawing attention to the innovative ways in which the country became a global leader in self-help housing—that is, housing and settlements that were built by their own residents. Gyger's book documents the serious attempts by architects, political leaders, academics, and everyday Peruvians to create sustainable, effective, and often quite innovative housing policies.Gyger's book is an interdisciplinary engagement that traces historical change along with theories of architecture, design, and urbanism. Gyger and the University of Pittsburgh Press should be applauded for producing a beautiful book with 61 images and 14 color plates that clearly demonstrate these case studies. After an introductory chapter that sets up the book's themes and summarizes different perspectives on urbanism in relation to Peru's development, the book proceeds in chronological fashion. Beginning in the 1950s, Gyger shows how Peru became a leader in self-help housing experimentation. Peru's conservative leaders eschewed top-down state housing projects in favor of encouraging informal settlements and self-help housing. As these barriadas quickly grew around Lima and other cities, John F. C. Turner, a British architect, arrived in Peru in 1957 and would go on to become one of the most influential advocates of self-help housing. Perhaps the most interesting of Gyger's discoveries is the strange consensus between the anarchist Turner and the conservative leaders of Peru in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Both groups were suspicious of state-led projects and instead promoted self-help housing that they both believed would empower residents. This consensus resulted in Peru creating a legal framework for the recognition of informal settlements and their planning.As the narrative moves into the later 1960s and 1970s, Gyger pays special attention to how Peruvian architects and everyday citizens engaged with global debates on self-help housing. These included proposals from US financial institutions to encourage self-help housing as well as the United Nations–sponsored competitions that invited leading global architects to create housing plans that were both affordable and avant-garde. Despite their flashy campaigns, Gyger argues, these plans were rather detached from the realities on the ground and ultimately futile. The final chapters of the book show how these failures began to raise new questions about informal settlements in Peru, even as their organization peaked during the military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado. Turner and other reformists began to question the embrace of self-help housing as a form of sidestepping large structural problems of inequality. The book's final chapter ends back at Peru's informal settlements in the 1980s, where the efforts of grassroots leftist activists are cut short by the arrival of Shining Path. Ultimately, self-help housing, with its elusive promises and flaws, continued, but now embraced by neoliberal reformers like Hernando de Soto.Ultimately, Gyger concludes that “aided self-help has often been more powerful as an idea than as a practice” (p. 378). This conclusion, and the detailed interdisciplinary analysis of many case studies that support it, will surely be of much interest to scholars of urbanism and urban history in Latin America. However, it also may prove disappointing to other historians hoping to understand how informal urban design either reflected or affected historical change in Peru. Unfulfilled plans, like the informal housing projects analyzed by Gyger, are still important to understand, especially if the reasons for their failure reveal important elements of Peruvian and Latin American history. Yet, it's often difficult to conclude if the often-unfulfilled nature of self-help housing analyzed in Gyger's book points more to specific failures of Peru's twentieth-century politics or to more general problems with the embrace of informality as a solution to urban growth in the developing world. Ultimately, I believe Gyger's book argues in favor of both factors, which may prove disappointing to some readers looking for a smoking gun to explain if self-help housing promotion has alleviated or worsened urbanism in Peru. Still, I would highly recommend this book for any historian of architecture, urbanism, or design. Gyger's detailed interdisciplinary approach is something that will hopefully appear in and inspire more urban histories of Latin America.

É POSSÍVEL EQUACIONAR O PROBLEMA DA POBREZA VIA ECONOMIA DE MERCADO?

Monografia na qual é exposta e analisada criticamente a concepção de política de regularização fundiária defendida pelo economista peruano Hernando de Soto. O objetivo do trabalho é o de interpretar esta concepção, que é centrada na proposta de formalização das propriedades imobiliárias detidas pelos pobres nas cidades das nações menos desenvolvidas, vendo-se esta medida como estratégica não somente para a superação da pobreza, como também para o êxito do capitalismo nestas nações. Evidencia-se ao longo do texto que apesar de suas críticas a certos aspectos do pensamento dominante, de Soto não rompe jamais com os cânones da ideologia do mercado e dos pressupostos da economia clássica, buscando forjar uma solução capitalista para a questão social, e assim relegitimar o capitalismo, prevenindo a sua ruptura. Discutem-se ainda algumas repercussões concretas do pensamento desotiano, nos âmbitos teórico e político, a fim de sinalizar para os resultados a que tem conduzido a adoção de tal perspectiva. Com base na análise da concepção desotiana constroem-se algumas hipóteses interpretativas do significado das políticas de regularização fundiária implementadas no continente latino-americano, tal como aquela que as relaciona ao contexto de disputas por faixas de mercado entre agentes capitalistas que atuam em diferentes escalas.

Enduring Traditions and the (Im)materiality of Early Colonial Encounters in the Southeastern United States

Hernando de Soto's expedition through the southeastern United States between 1539 and 1543 is often regarded as a watershed moment for the collapse of Indigenous societies across the region. Historical narratives have proposed that extreme depopulation as a result of early contact destabilized Indigenous economies, politics, networks, and traditions. Although processes of depopulation and transformation were certainly set in motion by this and earlier colonial encounters, the timing, temporality, and heterogeneous rhythms of postcontact Indigenous histories remain unclear. Through the integration of radiocarbon and archaeological data from the Mississippian earthen platform mound at Dyar (9GE5) in central Georgia, we present a case of Indigenous endurance and resilience in the Oconee Valley that has long been obfuscated by materially based chronologies and typologies. Bayesian chronological modeling suggests that Indigenous Mississippian traditions persisted for up to 130 years beyond contact with European colonizers. We argue that advances in modeling radiocarbon dates, along with meaningful consultation/collaboration with descendant communities, can contribute to efforts that move us beyond a reliance on materially based chronologies that can distort and erase Indigenous histories.

La misión granadina de <em>Maryam</em>: la construcción de una imaginería mariana para los moriscos granadinos y la versión talaveriana de la <em>Vita Christi</em> de Francesc Eiximenis

En este artículo presento una nueva interpretación de las imágenes de molde de la Virgen encargadas al escultor Huberto Alemán por parte de Isabel la Católica y el arzobispo Fray Hernando de Talavera para las parroquias responsables de la instrucción religiosa de los moriscos recién convertidos en la Granada de 1500; explorando cómo la visión “islamizada” de la Virgen presente en la Vita Christi de Eiximenis, traducida al castellano e impresa años antes por Talavera como parte de su proyecto misional, pudo ser utilizada por el arzobispo para promover una interpretación de estas imágenes marianas como elementos clave en la educación espiritual de los moriscos granadinos del Albaicín.

Alabama's Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South by Daniel S. Dupre

Reviewed by: Alabama's Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South by Daniel S. Dupre James Taylor Carson (bio) Keywords Alabama, South, Native Americans, First Peoples, frontier Alabama's Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South. By Daniel S. Dupre. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018. Pp. 310. Cloth, $60.00; paper, $35.00; e-book, $34.99.) Going back a few decades, ethnohistorians have been arguing that a full understanding of the American South's history cannot be gained until scholars grapple with the depth and significance of the region's Indigenous histories and peoples. In Alabama's Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South, Daniel S. Dupre has done just that. He posits a revision of American frontier history that stands apart from comparable works and models an alternative kind of practice that future scholars will have to confront. By situating his interpretation in a past that begins with the introduction of maize to the region around one thousand years ago, Dupre shifts the focus from Frederick Jackson Turner's westward gaze and enacts fully the promise of Daniel Richter's call for a view from the east.1 Such a pivot entails all sorts of new perspectives, the most salient of which are that the conventional history of the Anglo American settlers who founded the state of Alabama occupy only the book's concluding chapter and that their most enduring edifice, the so-called "Old South," proves to have lasted for only a little more than a generation. What then are we to make of the preceding centuries of the region's human occupation? Or the impact of Spanish incursions that pre-dated the invention of the cotton gin by almost two and a half centuries? Or the fact that for a little more than a century imperial powers jockeyed for pre-eminence among the region's First Nations in ways that left the nations holding both power and initiative? A different approach to the past enables a different South to emerge. Dupre eschews the linearity and progressivism of the classical frontier formulation and instead invokes Richard White's "middle ground."2 Importantly, Dupre [End Page 179] acknowledges that middle grounds existed amongst Alabama's first peoples long before the arrival of Europeans, but, he asserts, Hernando de Soto's violent entrada in the early 1540s caused an abrupt change as slave raids, the pressures of commercial hunting, and the vagaries of imperial diplomacy pulled First Peoples deeply into the emerging Atlantic world. Only when the American republic won its independence from Great Britain did this centuries-old "Older" South begin to crumble. The United States' aggressive race-based social organization backed by overwhelming military, demographic, and bureaucratic power cleansed the state of Alabama of most of its indigenous population and established in the 1830s the conditions under which race-based slavery and cotton monoculture could thrive. If we take into account the significance of the deeper history of Alabama's frontier, Dupre argues, we will have to reconsider how historians contextualize and narrate America's past in relation to three main themes. First, exploring the long span of time going back to the arrival of the Spanish helps us understand why events in the early nineteenth century unfolded as they did. For example, the different historical origins of early Alabama's two rival centers of settler power structured the territory's subsequent history. Second, Americans' repudiation of the myriad societies, cultures, and practices that had characterized life in what became Alabama committed the United States more fully to the paths of race, enslavement, and violence that bedevil us still. Third, scholars have begun to deploy the word métis more and more in southern historiography, and Dupre uses it to such an extent that one of the clearest, though still underplayed, implications of the book is that we need to come to grips with these people in ways that get beyond the anecdotal and episodic treatment they have thus far received. The English language has no commensurate term for such people, which complicates their historical interpretation and historiographical explication, but there is a story here of people who blended families, cultural practices, and politics...

Staircase or safety net? Examining the meaning and functioning of RDP house ownership among beneficiaries: a case study of Klapmuts, Stellenbosch

ABSTRACT Recognising the apartheid legacy of inaccess to housing and property for the majority of black South Africans, the Constitution entrenches rights of access to housing and property. Since 1994, one of the main ways the government has pursued this mandate has been to roll out an ambitious Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) private house ownership programme. The overarching goal of the programme (now called Breaking New Ground or BNG) is to establish "sustainable human settlements" that result in "sustainable development, wealth creation, poverty alleviation and equity". Speaking to the "wealth creation" and "equity" aspects, a key component ofBNG is "ensuring property can be accessed by all as an asset for wealth creation and empowerment". Thus, BNG is explicitly aimed at addressing inequality through asset formation. Yet, despite the considerable public resources spent on home ownership projects in South Africa, there is little understanding of the subjective meaning accorded to having an RDP house and the extent to which the financial function of private housing, as a wealth-generating asset (the Hernando de Soto "staircase" role), plays out in practice alongside its more poverty alleviation function as providing social security, including shelter (the "safety net" role). To contribute towards a better understanding of the role and value of RDP home ownership, I undertook a qualitative study among 21 beneficiaries of an RDP housing project in Klapmuts (Stellenbosch). The study provides some tentative conclusions regarding the utility and impact of the private ownership paradigm of these State projects. Keywords: RDP ownership, house, home, property rights, Klapmuts.

Land Titling Improves Access to Microcredit in Cambodia: Be Careful What You Wish For

The poverty reduction and developmental role of land titles has been a contested issue since the concept was popularised in the early 2000s by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto and the World Bank. Among other things, land titles were held to provide vital local economic development impetus because they could be used as collateral in order to increase the supply of microcredit, thereby supposedly allowing every individual in poverty an opportunity to escape their predicament by engaging in individual entrepreneurship. Initially, financial institutions in the global south resisted to accept land titles, resulting in minimal impact, but land titles are now increasingly used as collateral. The one country where this process has gone furthest is Cambodia, where land titles are now almost obligatory and this has helped to increase the volume of microcredit in circulation to world-record levels. This paper addresses the question as to whether or not this breakthrough institutional development has had the positive impact on Cambodia’s poor that de Soto, the World Bank and other advocates of land titling have long argued it would. The conclusion is that it has not: the supply of microcredit has indeed increased exponentially, but this has ultimately had a negative impact on the mass of clients while the narrow elite associated with the supply of microcredit (CEOs, senior management and shareholders of the leading microcredit institutions, investors, foreign advisors) have all very made significant financial returns. It appears that de Soto and the World Bank were thus ultimately proved wrong in the one country that most approximated the preconditions they suggested would lead to economic and social success.

Multiproxy evidence for rapid and enduring anthropogenic vegetation change during the Late Holocene from an abandoned channel of the Mississippi River, Wapanocca Bayou, Arkansas, USA

AbstractGeoarchaeological cores from an infilling channel within the meander belt of the Central Mississippi Valley recovered multiproxy evidence of vegetation changes during the Late Holocene. The sampling site, Wapanocca Bayou (Crittenden County, Arkansas), is flanked by levees that supported settlements of prehistoric Late Woodland and Mississippian farm sites, villages, and towns (AD 300–1650). These settlements include the Bradley site (3CT7), which was potentially the capital of a powerful Native American chiefdom visited by Hernando De Soto's North American expedition in 1541. Age‐depth modeling of radiocarbon dates from a 10+ meter core indicates continuous infilling of the channel since at least 2,450 cal BP. Palynological records preserve diachronic and patterned shifts in vegetation reflecting significant disturbances in these dynamic meander‐belt settings. Coeval trends in soil phosphorus, organic matter, charcoal concentrations, and magnetic susceptibility combined with archaeological evidence for increasingly intense landuse practices support our argument that vegetation changes along Wapanocca Bayou were caused by prehistoric anthropogenic disturbances, rather than natural processes associated with oxbow infilling and terrestrialization. With time the role of the natural vegetation succession receded in relative importance as local ecosystems were progressively modified by prehistoric Native Americans. This change was then sustained by intensified historical agricultural practices.

Land rights, local financial development and industrial activity: evidence from Flanders (nineteenth–early twentieth century)

In this paper, we investigate the hypothesis that the economic divergence across Flemish localities between 1830 and 1910 is explained by the theory of Hernando de Soto. We hypothesize that the uniform land rights installed after the French revolution provided borrowers with an attractive form of collateral. Conditional on the presence of local financial development provided by a new government-owned bank this eased access to external finance and fostered industrial and commercial economic activity. Using primary historical data of about 1179 localities in Flanders, we find that the variation in the local value of land (collateral) and the variation in local financial development jointly explain a substantial amount of the variation in non-agricultural employment accumulated between 1830 and 1910. By 1910, industrial and commercial economic activity was more developed in localities where both early (1846) rural land prices were high and early (1880) local financial development was more pronounced, which is in line with the ‘de Soto’ hypothesis.

Hernando de Acuña, casos de imitatio de Ausiàs March en el petrarquismo hispánico del QuinientosHernando de Acuña: Cases of imitatio of Ausiàs March in the Hispanic Petrarchism of the 1500s

Abstract Ausiàs March (1400–1459) was imitated in the Hispanic Renaissance. It is already visible in Garcilaso de la Vega’s (1501–1535) poetry as well as in Juan Boscán’s (1487/92–1542). Hernando de Acuña (1518–1580/82) was their follower. Previous research accounts for the exclusive imitation of some of March’s lesser-known poems in Acuña’s Varias poesías (1591). First, this paper offers other examples that had been unperceived. Second, it sheds new light on these already known imitation cases, and it justifies their existence in the context of the imitatio of March in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Os cinco mistérios do capital

Trata-se da visão apresentada por Hernando de Soto, economista e político peruano, na obra “O mistério do capital: Por que o capitalismo dá certo nos países desenvolvidos e fracassa no resto do mundo”, especificamente no Capítulo 1, titulado “Os cinco mistérios do capital”. No primeiro capítulo o autor faz uma apresentação resumida do conteúdo do livro, que expõe uma visão crítica sobre a forma como a economia nos países em desenvolvimento é tratada, propõe uma nova visão sobre o capital acumulado pelas pessoas pobres, o qual atribui o nome de capital morto. Posteriormente, o autor demonstra como a “extralegalidade”, que também pode ser chamada de irregularidade, impede que o capital acumulado pelas pessoas de baixa renda circule, gerando desenvolvimento.

Invisible enemies: the devastating effect of gossip in Castile at the end of the fifteenth century

ABSTRACTThis article explores the content, examples, audience and aims of Hernando de Talavera’s “Treatise on gossip”. By locating the work in the overall context of the author’s production and in its time-space coordinates, the objective is to emphasise the meaning and relevance of the treatise in the turbulent events of the last quarter of the century. Working on the effects of “slanderous rumours” on “publica fama”, we will explore the consequences of gossip and distrust after the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in order to show how social practices reflected the cultural, religious and political debates and developments in the construction of the “monarquía católica” at the turn of the century.

Una nueva contribución a la técnica de la música de tecla antigua ibérica: unas digitaciones para órgano de 1649

Se exponen y comentan unas digitaciones para órgano de un tratado anónimo publicado en Madrid en 1649 (atribuido a Tomás Gómez por Lorente en «El porqué de la Música»), señalando su similitud con las digitaciones propuestas por Hernando de Cabezón en 1578. Se resumen otros detalles de interés de dicho tratado: instrucciones para el gobierno del coro, solfeo con siete sílabas y sin mutanzas, proporciones. El tratado muestra también la vigencia del sistema de notación por cifra en el siglo XVII, así como la importancia de la obra de Cabezón casi cien años después de su publicación.

Bi-polar development: A theoretical discursive commentary on land titling and cultural destruction in Kenya

Development economist Hernando de Soto Polar has effectively advocated for property rights in the Third World, as his ideas have influenced the policies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and United Nations Development Programme. He envisions land titling as a means of lifting the poor out of poverty. I argue that his classical liberal interpretations of property and the good life are dangerously naive. One can see the dangers of de Soto’s imperialist and one-dimensional vision after considering the cultural destruction that results from his brand of development in pastoral Kenya. Also, this article demands a reframing of standardized development approaches. It argues that the conventional view is prone to creating unstable, culturally hegemonic relationships between the government and entrepreneurs, and the people of the land. Asymmetrical lawfare is another nondemocratic feature of de Soto’s development. This article emphasizes that Kenyan pastoralists are not inherently vulnerable people but that they have been rendered vulnerable by society. Lastly, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is the basis for an alternative to de Soto’s development design. UNDRIP was a hard-fought legal protection for the world’s indigenous peoples that makes human dignity central to development. The Global North and Global South produce differing visions of development. This article points to Kenya as an example of how the Global North’s vision has fundamentally failed because it disenfranchises pastoralists—the very people policymakers and policy supporters claim it is intended to benefit.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: American Trailblazer by Robin Varnum

Reviewed by: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: American Trailblazer by Robin Varnum Paul E. Hoffman Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: American Trailblazer. By Robin Varnum. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2014. Pp. xvi, 368. $26.95. ISBN: 978-0-8061-4497-9.) Raised in Jerez de la Frontera, a client and servant of the powerful Dukes of Medina Sidonia throughout his life, a veteran of war in Italy, and married to a wealthy conversa (a person of Jewish origins from a family that converted to Christianity during the late medieval period), Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was appointed royal Treasurer for the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez in 1526 and subsequently Governor of the Spanish province of Río de la Plata (roughly today's Paraguay) in 1540. Both appointments failed to produce the results he evidently hoped for while, somewhat paradoxically, allowing him to create a reputation as a "good conquistador," one who saw the Native Americans as fully human persons capable of embracing Christianity and Spanish rule without Spanish use of violence, [End Page 395] i.e., military conquest. He also gained a reputation as a sort of Christian missionary, not only because of his seeming stance on how to treat Native Americans but also because, once forced into the role by Native insistence, he used Christian prayers as part of healings, events that could be considered miracles. The Narváez expedition landed on the west coast of Florida, marched north to near modern Tallahassee, and then by locally built barges sailed along the Gulf Coast until the ships were wrecked or lost at sea on the Texas coast. From there Cabeza de Vaca and three other survivors eventually wandered across northern Mexico and part of the future United States Southwest until they met Spaniards in Sinaloa. He returned to Spain without the fortune he had hoped to obtain but with his version of a joint report on the odyssey that he and his companions had prepared in Mexico, and that, with some additional editing, he published at Zaragoza in 1542 (La Relación que dio Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca de lo acaesido en las Indias en la armada donde iva por governador Pánfilo de Narbáez …) and in a second edition in 1555 (the book is better known under its 1749 title: Naufragios). He declined offers to join Hernando de Soto's expedition, which was making up when he returned to Spain. Cabeza de Vaca's appointment as Governor of the Río de la Plata (1540) also ended in failure. There he encountered an entrenched group of Spaniards and Spaniard-Guarani relations that included the use of women to cement alliances and provide services of all sorts for their (common law) husbands. That is, he found conditions that flew in the face of Catholic teachings about marriage and in the face of the Ordinanzas of 1526 that were to govern the Spanish "conquest" of the Americas. When, by his account, he tried to correct these and other abuses, as his contract with the Crown required, the local powers organized a mutiny, imprisoned him, and sent hm to Spain in chains. He was accompanied by papers that characterized him as a violator of the Ordenanzas. Jailed and duly charged with various crimes, Cabeza de Vaca spent the remaining years of his life seeking first a lessening of his sentences (achieved) and then exoneration. As part of that effort, his secretary, Pero Hernández, wrote a commentary on the events in Paraguay (published in La Relación y Comentarios del gobernador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca de lo acaescido en las dos journadas que hizo a las Indias … [Valladolid, 1555]). Cabeza seems to have died (1556?) without a full pardon. Professor Varnum ably weaves the recent scholarship on Cabeza's life, the Narváez expedition (especially on the route he took in Texas) and his activities in the Río de la Plata with his own writings (and those of Hernández) about those events. The views of Cabeza's opponents in Paraguary are noticed but quickly passed over as she continues to follow his account. The result is...

The Lady Half-Devoured by a Dragon and the Iconography of Saint Margaret of Antioch: Interpreting an Anonymous Invención in the Cancionero general (11CG-517)

Following in the footsteps of Ian Macpherson, I offer an interpretation of an anonymous invención found in the Cancionero general (11CG-517) and the British Library Cancionero (LB1-251). I maintain that the image displayed by the jouster was inspired by the iconography of the virgin-martyr Saint Margaret of Antioch, and I propose a theory about the identity of the lady addressed and, with less certainty, about the identity of the jouster and the occasion when the invención was displayed, using Pinar’s Juego trobado as a tool of research and invoking a passage on the sinfulness of the fashion among ladies and damsels for wearing hooped petticoats in a treatise by Hernando de Talavera.

The Sharing Economy as an Equalizing Economy

Economic equality is often said to be the key problem of our time. But information technology dematerializes the world in ways that are helpful to the 99 percent, because information can be shared. This essay looks how one fruit of the information revolution—the sharing economy—has important equalizing features on both its supply and demand side. First, on the supply side, the intermediaries in the sharing economy, like Airbnb and Uber, allow owners of housing and cars to monetize their most important capital assets. The gig aspect of this economy also creates spot markets in jobs that have flexible hours and monetize people’s passions, such as cooking meals in their home. Such benefits make these jobs even more valuable than the earnings that show up imperfectly in income statistics. The law and economics analysis of Hernando De Soto has shown how creating property rights and more formal markets can help those of modest means in the developing world. The sharing economy performs a similar function for people of modest means in the developed world. Second, on the demand side, the sharing economy also creates gains for consumers that largely go to the 99 percent. Airbnb finds them cheaper accommodations in places that may have been unaffordable. But the advantages go beyond price. Summoning a ridesharing car almost anywhere with the press of smart phone is a much closer approximation of having a chauffeur— a hallmark of wealth—than hailing a taxi. The law and economics analysis of Ronald Coase shows how replacing such physical agents with online agents redounds largely to the benefit of those with modest incomes. If the sharing economy has equalizing as well as efficiency features, regulations must be careful not to disturb them. But because the sharing economy permits new entry into markets, incumbents will respond with new regulatory efforts to hamper it. The essay provides a taxonomy of the different kinds of regulation to help preserve the equalizing features from being impaired. The essay ends by showing how the sharing economy more generally problematizes the conventional story of growing material inequality. The dematerialization of the world provides greater opportunities for broadly shared consumption, like that on Facebook, and improves working conditions, particularly for the middling classes. Only by taking account of these trends can we understand the changing relative material conditions of people.

Lumpen Politics? A Day in “El Hueco”

AbstractThe market of El Hueco in downtown Lima sits inside a large pit dug out for the foundation of a state building that was never built. The below-ground corridors and crammed vending stalls in this poorly regulated market are usually flooded with shoppers, yet government officials and the media frequently condemn it as a vile and dangerous place. But how and why does El Hueco offend? Through an ethnographic account of a day's events, cast against a discussion of Marxism's “lumpenproletariat” and Hernando de Soto's “informality,” I argue that implicit in El Hueco's challenge of state bureaucracy is a class critique that resists conventional class analysis and that affirms the “lumpen” as a politics in its own right. “Lumpen” here does not refer to categories of people but to a resource that can be appropriated and deployed freely. Linked to the anti-political tactics of President Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s, lumpen as a resource has changed the face of postwar Lima by defying and deforming from within the bourgeois ideals of urban development and bureaucratic form. It has also arguably changed the face of politics and played a role in the revival of fujimorismo during and since the 2016 presidential elections.