The Many Meanings of Poverty

by Milton, Cynthia E.

• ISBN13: 9780804751780
• ISBN10: 0804751781
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-09-17
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

This book analyzes the diverse understandings of poverty in a multiracial colonial society, eighteenth-century Quito. It shows that in a colonial world both a pauper and a landowner could lay claim to assistance as the "deserving poor" while the vast majority of the impoverished Andean population did not share the same avenues of poor relief.The Many Meanings of Povertyasks how colonialism shaped arguments about povertysuch as the categories of "deserving" and "undeserving" poorin multiracial Quito, and forwards three central observations: poverty as a social construct (based on gender, age, and ethnoracial categories); the importance of these arguments in the creation of governing legitimacy; and the presence of the "social" and "economic" poor. An examination of poverty illustrates changing social and religious attitudes and practices towards poverty and the evolution of the colonial state during the eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms.

Author Biography

Cynthia E. Milton is Canada Research Chair in Latin American History at the Université de Montréal. She is coeditor of The Art of Truthtelling about Authoritarian Rule (2005).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Preface	p. xv
Introduction: Colonialism, Social Compacts, and the Taxonomy of Poverty	p. 1
The City and People of Quito
The City of Quito	p. 17
Living on the Edge: Survival Strategies of the Urban Poor	p. 35
Society of Compacts: The Social Poor
Defining the "Solemn Poor": "Wordplay and Petitions of Poverty in Colonial Quito, 1678-1782	p. 65
Prostrate before the Feet of the King: Widows, Widowhood, Pensions, and Colonial Compacts	p. 99
Society of Compacts: The Economic Poor
Children on the Fringe of Empire: The Limits and Uses of Juvenile Welfare	p. 125
Putting the Colonial (Poor) House in Order: The Wretched Poor and the Bourbon State	p. 153
When Societies Meet: The Blurring of Social Compacts
Shifting Compacts of the Traditional Poor: Widows as Viudas and as Pobres	p. 191
The Broadening and Narrowing of the Solemn Poor: Poor Spaniards, the Wretched, and Collapsing Privileges, 1783-1800	p. 215
Conclusion: The Erosion of Charity, Boundaries, and Colonial Compacts	p. 245
Appendix	p. 257
Notes	p. 261
Glossary	p. 321
Bibliography	p. 325
Index	p. 349
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