Integrates gender and sexuality into the main currents of historical interpretation concerning Latin America.

To illuminate the complex cultural foundations of state formation in modern Mexico, Compromised Positions explains how and why female prostitution became politicized in the context of revolutionary social reform between 1910 and 1940. Focusing on the public debates over legalized sexual commerce and the spread of sexually transmitted disease in the first half of the twentieth century, Katherine Bliss argues that political change was compromised time and again by reformers' own antiquated ideas about gender and class, by prostitutes' outrage over official attempts to undermine their livelihood, and by clients' unwillingness to forgo visiting brothels despite revolutionary campaigns to promote monogamy, sexual education, and awareness of the health risks associated with sexual promiscuity. In the Mexican public's imagination, the prostitute symbolized the corruption of the old regime even as her redemption represented the new order's potential to dramatically alter gender relations through social policy. Using medical records, criminal case files, and letters from prostitutes and their patrons to public officials, Compromised Positions reveals how the contradictory revolutionary imperatives of individual freedom and public health clashed in the effort to eradicate prostitution and craft a model of morality suitable for leading Mexico into the modern era.

Challenging traditional approaches to medical history, Disease in the History of Modern Latin America advances understandings of disease as a social and cultural construction in Latin America. This innovative collection provides a vivid look at the latest research in the cultural history of medicine through insightful essays about how disease—whether it be cholera or aids, leprosy or mental illness—was experienced and managed in different Latin American countries and regions, at different times from the late nineteenth century to the present. Based on the idea that the meanings of sickness—and health—are contestable and subject to controversy, Disease in the History of Modern Latin America displays the richness of an interdisciplinary approach to social and cultural history. Examining diseases in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, the contributors explore the production of scientific knowledge, literary metaphors for illness, domestic public health efforts, and initiatives shaped by the agendas of international agencies. They also analyze the connections between ideas of sexuality, disease, nation, and modernity; the instrumental role of certain illnesses in state-building processes; welfare efforts sponsored by the state and led by the medical professions; and the boundaries between individual and state responsibilities regarding sickness and health. Diego Armus’s introduction contextualizes the essays within the history of medicine, the history of public health, and the sociocultural history of disease. Contributors. Diego Armus, Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Kathleen Elaine Bliss, Ann S. Blum, Marilia Coutinho, Marcus Cueto, Patrick Larvie, Gabriela Nouzeilles, Diana Obregón, Nancy Lays Stepan, Ann Zulawski

The only reader currently available on criminality in Latin America, Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America reconstructs the way in which different Latin American societies have viewed, described, defined, and reacted to criminal behavior. Crime in Latin America is explored in terms of gender, race, class, and criminological theory. The highly readable essays in this book explore how Catholic notions of sin, natural law, the "divine" rights of absolutist monarchs, liberal rights of "man," positivism, and social Darwinism received a sympathetic, even enthusiastic, endorsement from policy makers throughout Latin America. Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America also shows how new methodologies have given scholars deeper insight into the significance of crime in Latin American societies. The selections testify that the insights of scholars like Eric Hobsbawm and Michel Foucault are the foundations of modern histories of crime in Latin America. This book is ideal for criminal justice, sociology, and Latin American social history courses.

Includes "Bibliographical section".

Cette bibliographie est conçue comme un ouvrage de référence pour la recherche sur l'éducation en Amérique latine dans ses aspects formel et non formel depuis les débuts à l'époque précolombienne jusque vers 1975 dans tous les pays d'Amérique latine et des Caraïbes.