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City and Society: Their Connection in Latin American Historical Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Eugene F. Sofer  and
Mark D. Szuchman
Eugene F. Sofer
Affiliation:
CONEG Policy Research Center
Mark D. Szuchman
Affiliation:
Florida International University
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The first part of this essay reviews some of the strengths and weaknesses in the current state of social history of Latin American cities. Specifically, it tries to create an awareness that quantitative urban studies need not be, and should not be, limited to aggregate data for sources. Unfortunately, many of the nascent quantitative studies of postindependence Latin American cities achieve their figures through published materials, principally demographic and commercial censuses. However, manuscript census returns, notarial records, judicial assessments, and other primary documentation can also provide the base from which we can observe frequencies both of personal vital records and of popular quotidian behavior; moving, marrying, going to school, buying or selling goods or property, and so on.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , 1979 , pp. 113 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. James Lockhart, “The Social History of Colonial Spanish America: Evolution and Potential,” LARR 7, no. 1 (Spring 1972):6.

2. Edward P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966), p. 12.

3. Clyde Griffen, “Public Opinion in Urban History,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4 (Winter, 1974):472. Other American historians would deny that relative peace existed between workers and employers in the nineteenth century, among them: David Montgomery, Beyond Equality (New York, 1967), and Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture and Society (New York, 1977). Both indicate that substantial resistance to the “norm” did, in fact, exist in the United States.

4. E. J. Hobsbawm, “Labor History and Ideology,” Journal of Social History 7 (Summer 1974):375.

5. The intimacy between political and social life is exemplified in Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America (New York, 1970); and Tulio Halperín-Donghi, The Aftermath of Revolution in Latin America (New York, 1973).

6. The connections between history and other social sciences, such as anthropology, are discussed in depth in Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis, (New York, 1969); sociological approaches in history appear in Richard Hofstadter and Seymour M. Lipset, eds., Sociology and History: Methods (New York, 1968).

7. Nancy S. Streuver, The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton, 1970).

8. Nancy S. Streuver, “The Study of Language and the Study of History,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4 (Winter 1974):401.

9. The most recent exposition of the results of LASCODOCS appears in Peter Boyd Bowman, “Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the Indies until 1600,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 56 (Nov. 1976):580–604; a compilation of previous findings may be found in Bowman, Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the New World, 1493–1580 (Buffalo, 1973).

10. For a discussion and exposition of the most enduring ideas on city life, see Richard Sennett, ed., Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities, (New York, 1969).

11. Luis González, San José de Gracia: Mexican Village in Transition, trans. John Upton (Austin, 1974); Mario Góngora, “Urban Social Stratification in Colonial Chile,” Hispanic American Historical Review 55 (Aug. 1975):421–48.

12. Lockhart's methodological approach to prosopography is summarized in James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru, (Austin, 1972), pp. 115–18; a more extensive consideration of method appears in Lockhart, “The Social History.” An eminent example of Lockhart's technique is Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford, 1974).

13. See R. C. Padden's review of Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, Hispanic American Historical Review 54 (Feb. 1974):125–27.

14. Lockhart, “The Social History,” p. 34.

15. Peter N. Stearns, “Some Comments on Social History,” Journal of Social History 1 (Fall 1967):5.

16. Peter N. Stearns, “Measuring the Evolution of Strike Movements,” International Review of Social History 19 (1974):1–27. An in-depth treatment appears in Peter N. Stearns, Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labor: A Cause Without Rebels (New Brunswick, 1971). Julio Godio, El movimiento obrero y la cuestión nacional (Buenos Aires, 1972) attempts rudimentary strike analysis based on reports of the Argentine Department of Labor, Boletín, No. 36 (enero 1918), p. 68 and goes on to analyze Sebastián Marotta, El movimiento sindical argentino 2 (Buenos Aires, 1961). Godio's calculations, however, are made pell-mell and are often incorrect; see p. 217.

17. For an illustration of precisely such a research approach, see chap. 6 of Peter Knights, The Plain People of Boston, 1830–1860: A Study in City Growth (New York, 1971).

18. Historians can benefit from some of the more recent discussions in Hubert M. Blalock, Jr., Social Statistics (New York, 1960); Linton C. Freeman, Elementary Applied Statistics for Students in Behavioral Science (New York, 1965). Charles M. Dollar and Richard J. Jensen, Historian's Guide to Statistics: Quantitative Analysis and Historical Research (New York, 1971) contains a very engaging and understandable discussion, esp. pp. 11–15; another good discussion may be found in Hubert M. Blalock, Jr., Causal Inferences in Nonexperimental Research (New York, 1972), pp. 87–91. For a debate over actual sampling usage, see Richard S. Alcorn and Peter R. Knights, “Most Uncommon Bostonians: A Critique of Stephan Thernstrom's The Other Bostonians, 1880–1970,” Historical Methods Newsletter 8 (June 1975):98–114; and in the same issue, Stephan Thernstrom, “Rejoinder to Alcorn and Knights,” pp. 115–20. See also Maris A. Vinovskis' review of Knights' The Plain People of Boston, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3 (Spring 1973):781–86.

19. An extremely readable work that will bring to light the rationale for computer usage, if necessary, is Edward Shorter, The Historian and the Computer: A Practical Guide (New York, 1971).

20. For example, the Journal of Interdisciplinary History published three articles in 1973–74 on the historical usage of ecological fallacy and regression. See J. Morgan Kousser, “Ecological Regression and the Analysis of Past Politics,” JIH 4 (Autumn 1973):237–62; Allan J. Lichtman, “Correlation, Regression, and the Ecological Fallacy: A Critique,” JIH 4 (Winter 1974):417–33; and E. Terrence Jones, “Using Ecological Regression,”JIH 4 (Spring 1974):593–96.

21. For an arduous exercise in record linkage in order to discover kinship patterns among members of the Chilean elite, see Maurice Zeitlin and Richard E. Ratcliff, “Research Methods for the Analysis of the Internal Structure of Dominant Classes: The Case of Landlords and Capitalists in Chile,” LARR 10, no. 3 (Fall 1975):5–61. Record linkage is the methodological tool employed in Mark D. Szuchman, “The Limits of the Melting Pot in Urban Argentina: Marriage and Integration in Córdoba, 1869–1909,” Hispanic American Historical Review 57 (Feb. 1977):24–50; and in Eugene F. Sofer and Mark D. Szuchman, “Educating Immigrants: Voluntary Associations in the Acculturation Process,” Thomas J. LaBelle, ed., Educational Alternatives in Latin America: Social Change and Social Stratification (Los Angeles, 1975), pp. 334–59. A most thorough effort in U.S. history can be found in Knights, The Plain People of Boston. Even the same document can become the basis of temporal movement; by using the 1811 manuscript census returns for Mexico City, certain dependent conditions have been posited about families who had earlier migrated to the capital, and the effects of such movements. See Alejandra Moreno Toscano and Carlos Aguirre Anaya, “Migrations to Mexico City in the Nineteenth Century: Research Approaches,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 17 (Feb. 1975):27–42. On SOUNDEX, see Charles Stephenson, “Tracing Those Who Left: Mobility Studies and the SOUNDEX Indexes to the U.S. Census,” Journal of Urban History 1 (Fall 1974):73–84.

22. Stephan Thernstrom, “Reflections on the New Urban History,” Daedalus 100 (Spring 1971):370.

23. Europeanists and Americanists are far ahead in the field of family history. Some notable examples: Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York, 1975); Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, 1970); Michael Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971); and John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York, 1970).

24. Charles E. Rosenberg, ed., The Family in History (Philadelphia, 1975). The same can be said of a previous anthology, Theodore K. Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg, eds., The Family in History: Interdisciplinary Essays (New York, 1971).

25. Roper Research Center, Latin America Data Catalog (Williamstown, Mass., 1976).

26. See, for example, Diana Hernando, “Casa y familia: Spatial Biographies in 19th Century Buenos Aires,” Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1973; and Maria Luiza Marcilio, La Ville de São Paulo: Peuplement et Population, 1750–1850 (Rouen, 1972).

27. A recent review of quantitative colonial histories appears in John J. TePaske, “Recent Trends in Quantitative History: Colonial Latin America,” LARR 10, no. 1 (Spring, 1975):51–62.

28. William P. McGreevey, “Recent Materials and Opportunities for Quantitative Research in Latin American History: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” LARR 9, no. 2 (Summer 1974):76.

29. Rosenberg, The Family in History, p. 5.

30. Thernstrom, “Reflections,” pp. 366–70.

31. Among his many writings, see Richard M. Morse, “A Prolegomenon to Latin American Urban History,” Hispanic American Historical Review 52 (Aug. 1972):359–94; “Recent Research on Latin American Urbanization: A Selective Survey with Commentary,” LARR 1, no. 1 (Fall 1965):35–74; “Trends and Issues in Latin American Urban Research, 1965–1970 (Part I),” LARR 6, no. 1 (Spring 1971):3–52; Part II appeared in LARR 6, no. 2 (Summer 1971):19–75.

32. Richard M. Morse, “Cities and Society in 19th Century Latin America: The Illustrative Case of Brazil,” in Jorge H. Hardoy and Richard P. Schaedel, eds., El proceso de urbanización en América desde sus orígenes hasta nuestros días, (Buenos Aires, 1969), p. 305.

33. José Luis Romero, “La ciudad latinamericana y los movimientos políticos,” in Jorge E. Hardoy and Carlos Tobar, eds., La urbanización en América Latina (Buenos Aires, 1969), pp. 297–310.

34. Amilcar Razori, Historia de la ciudad argentina, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1945); Nicolás Besio Moreno, Buenos Aires: puerto del Río de la Plata, Capital de la Argentina. Estudio crítico de su población, 1536–1936 (Buenos Aires, 1939). For a more extensive study of how Argentines have treated the city in their research, see Mark D. Szuchman, “Visiones del crisol en la ciudad americana: esperanzas europeas y nacionales en los Estados Unidos y en la Argentina durante el período de la inmigración masiva,” Paper presented at the X Jornadas, Asociación Argentina de Estudios Americanos, Buenos Aires, 1976.

35. Gino Germani has been the pioneer of urban studies in Argentina and other Latin American countries; his activities and training methods in sociology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires have generated a number of urbanists. Examples of his works are: Gino Germani, Jorge Graciarena, and Miguel Murmis, La asimilación de los inmigrantes en la Argentina y el fenómeno del regreso en la inmigración reciente (Buenos Aires, 1964); Germani, Assimilation of Immigrants in Urban Areas: Methodological Notes, 2d ed. (Buenos Aires, 1966); Estructura social de la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1955); El proceso de urbanización en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1959). For a specific treatment of Germani's formation and contribution see Joseph A. Kahl, Modernization, Exploitation, and Dependency in Latin America: Germani, Gonzalez-Casanova, and Cardoso (New Brunswick, 1976), pp. 23–68.

36. Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo (Mexico, 1958). For some overviews of sarmientista philosophy, see Hector F. Bravo, Sarmiento, pedagogo social (Buenos Aires, 1965); and Enrique Anderson Imbert, Genio y figura de Sarmiento (Buenos Aires, 1967).

37. Mark D. Szuchman, “Mobility and Integration in Urban Argentina: Córdoba in the Liberal Era,” Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1976, esp. chap. 2.

38. James R. Scobie, Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, 1870–1910 (New York, 1974), particularly chap. 5.

39. For a review of the debate over the political implications of in-migration to the city of Buenos Aires and its effects at the time of Peronist formation, see Eldon Kenworthy, “Interpretaciones ortodoxas y revisionistas del apoyo inicial del peronismo,” Desarrollo Económico 14 (enero–marzo 1975):749–63; Peter H. Smith, “The Social Base of Peronism,” Hispanic American Historical Review 52 (Feb. 1972):55–73; and “Las elecciones argentinas de 1946 y las inferencias ecológicas,” Desarrollo Económico 14 (julio-setiembre 1974):385–98; and Gino Germani, “El surgimiento del peronismo: el rol de los obreros y de los migrantes internos,” Desarrollo Economico 13 (octubre-diciembre 1973):435–88.

40. The works of Knights and Thernstrom have already been mentioned. An example of good use of directories and school registers when manuscript census schedules are not available is Howard P. Chudacoff, Mobile Americans: Residential and Social Mobility in Omaha, 1880–1920 (New York, 1972).

41. While the data are similar, the admissions process for archives and their accompanying restrictions are different in the Federal Capital. The civil registry, under the control of the courts and located in the Palacio de los Tribunales, does not permit researchers to examine the period after 1930. Those interested must formally petition the Director of the Judicial Archive for permission to enter.

42. The educational mobility of children in the sampled households can be traced only at the university level, since no records exist of primary or secondary school enrollment. The archive of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba contains the Libros de Grados, which lists each graduate with his degree and discipline.

43. Eugene F. Sofer, From Pale to Pampa: A Social History of the Jews of Buenos Aires (New York, 1979).

44. Barthold Georg Niebuhr, “Vorrede zu der ersten Ausgabe,” in M. Isler, ed., Römische Geschichte, rev. ed., 3 vols. (Berlin, 1873); quoted in Fritz Stern, ed., The Varieties of History (Cleveland, 1956), p. 48.

45. James Harvey Robinson and Charles A. Beard, “Preface,” The Development of Modern Europe, 2 vols. (Boston, 1907); quoted in Stern, The Varieties of History, p. 266.