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Norms beyond Empire : Law-Making and Local Normativities in Iberian Asia, 1500-1800

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Penilaian

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Although they constantly shape behavior and nudge people to act in certain ways, norms tend to be taken for granted. Taking off shoes or removing a hat when entering a sacred space are not merely the result of individual decisions made upon crossing the threshold of a temple; they are appropriate ways of acting in that specific context and they signal conformity with a norm. This can also be noticed when one does not know the appropriate behavior and so looks around for social cues: if others take off their shoes, it may perhaps be appropriate to do so too—even if we do not know why. In this sense, norms have a way of being always present yet going unnoticed; that is, until a viola-tion exposes our normative expectations. For example, social faux pas, such as arriving underdressed to a cocktail party or overdressed to an informal gathering, only once they happen, reveal that conventions and expectations have been offended. Beyond the transitory embarrassment, the consequences of such violations are not necessarily grave. But the offence itself shows that, until then, everyone else at the gathering had been observing an implicit and intuitive norm. And besides those that are implicitly and intuitively followed, conventions, standards, commandments, rules, and laws, among innumerable others, are also norms that are—to a greater or lesser extent—institutional-ized or explicitly stated.As they tend to structure behaviors, utterances, and practices, historians have long confronted the question of whether it is possible to study norms at all. On the one hand, historical sources reveal what people said and did, but they rarely show what they believed, thought, or understood while saying and doing so. On the other hand, since norms are pervasive and are grounded in culture and experience, people do not simply act arbitrarily, instead operat-ing by following norms and evaluating the consequences of offending them. These norms can thus be reconstructed through historical sources with careful attention to the practices.1 This latter approach can be said to focus on nor-mativity: instead of merely seeking to describe what people said and did, it uses these behaviors and utterances as ways of looking into their broader nor-mative content. To use some examples from this volume, wearing a hat when attending mass, providing shelter to missionaries, or deciding on the date of a wedding are all actions and decisions which can be simply described as such, but they can also be described as complying with or defying explicit or implicit normative expectations. And, often, acting in a certain way or saying certain things is not as straightforward as it seems, but in fact pits interests against norms, as well as different kinds of norms against each other. Accordingly, looking at normativity means paying attention to both the factuality and the normative meanings attached to different practices, behaviors, and utterances.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

946 SAA n

Penerbit

: BRILL., 2021

Deskripsi Fisik

367 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9789004472839

Klasifikasi

946

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

History of Modern Iberian Peninsula

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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