Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The project was a textual and historical study that investigated the ideas and activities of women who, as a social group, contributed to the making of public culture in early nineteenth-century Latin America but were largely excluded from it. It examined how gender shaped the political discourses of Latin American independence. Some of the research questions were: What were the links between politics and sexual difference? How were women constructed as subjects and objects in contemporary political discourse? What were women's political culture and associational life, where did they take place, and how were they manifested? How did women respond to Republican discourse of individual rights? What were the contradictions in Latin American political discourse which arose from its formulations of gender categories? The methodology was interdisciplinary and text-based involving archival retrieval and discourse analysis. The research scope was continental. Research was undertaken in Latin America, namely in Buenos Aires, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, and Quito. The project team established a principle corpus of texts by retrieving relevant published and unpublished material that identified and examined gendered political discourse. Women's political culture was investigated through enquiry into women's family-based or community networks. The database resulting from the project registers women's participation, writing and organizations.
Main Topics:
The database includes the names and short biographies of women who featured in the Latin American Wars of Independence (c. 1790 - 1850) whether as actors, authors, or the object of newspaper reports and other documents, and the names and short biographies of some of the men who wrote about women, worked with them, or otherwise helped them into the records. Extracts of the work of women who wrote are included with details of their publication or location (if MSS). Rare texts such as poems, newspaper articles and letters (a crucial means of contact as families were separated during the civil wars) are reproduced. Variables include name, place, date, group (i.e. 'tertulia', family members). This allows users to build up a picture of women's associational life and political activity throughout this period. Full bibliographical references and their sources are also included. An image bank including portraits and related iconography of some of the women and the men involved with the independence movement and the building of the new republics is available through the project website at http://www.genderlatam.org.uk/image_bank.php (last accessed 10/12/2007).
Purposive selection/case studies
Transcription of existing materials
Compilation or synthesis of existing material
