This article focuses on the history of an Afro-descendant family over its seven generations in one region of Minas Gerais. Although it is notoriously difficult to trace families founded by slaves, this one is an exception: it has proved possible to trace this family over a century and a half, and with a remarkable level of detail, because its members mostly stayed in one place. The implications of their permanence go beyond mere genealogy or family reconstitution to challenge long-standing historiographical perspectives. Over the years many scholars have agreed that Brazilian colonial and early imperial society was characterized by the near-constant movement of all segments of the population. New frontiers opened by agriculture, ranching, and mining attracted some members of the elite, but also beckoned the less favored with new opportunities. This incessant movement has even been touted as an impediment to the advancement of family history in Brazil.
A health care coalition in Maine has piloted a performance-based incentive payment program that creates a single statewide program, based on common standards. Incentive payments were funded by a hospital's financial guarantee that was matched by employers. A two-step incentive allocation methodology differentiates adequate and superior performance. The incentive model is sufficiently flexible to accommodate different settings and evolving performance standards. This case study provides useful insights to payers and hospitals that are considering similar regional initiatives, emphasizing the collaborative context that underscored this venture. [Health Affairs 26, no. 3 (2007):
As originally proposed in the early 1970s, the proto-industrialisation model was meant to serve as a more complete explanation of that phase in the general transition from agrarian feudalism to industrial capitalism rather vaguely referred to as the period of manufactures. Early proponents emphasised the role of proto-industrialisation in channelling development toward fully-fledged factory system industrialisation. Proto-industrial theories dealing with the complex interplay of economic, social, demographic, cultural and technological processes eliminate many of the uncertainties generated by the original debates over the general process of transition. Certainly, it is no longer possible to deny the contributions of rural/peasant non-agricultural productive activities to the development of early factory industry as a whole, as well as to social changes leading to the emergence of a proletariat.
As regards the slave societies of the Americas, it is hard to imagine a more palpable example of social mobility than manumissions. The fact that exslaves were able to carve out a space for themselves within the larger slave societies attests to their resilience—a resilience that must have played a role in obtaining freedom in the first place—and demonstrates that a considerable measure of social and racial flux existed in at least some of those societies. Manumission and miscegenation, independendy or in association with one another, decisively contributed to the sometimes explosive growth of colored and mestizo populations, which came to characterize large parts of Latin America. Few better examples exist than Brazil, where it was not at all uncommon for ex-slaves to become slaveholders in their own right.
ResumoEste artigo trata dos complexos temas de etnicidade e classificação social no Brasil dos séculos XVIII e XIX. Bases de dados substanciais, de fontes primárias distintas, permitem vislumbrar um quadro integrado dessa complexidade, tal como evoluiu nas Minas Gerais. A lógica no uso das categorias étnicas/de cor e sociais emerge pelo cruzamento de nomes e características individuais nos registros de batismo e de casamento e em listas nominativas. O texto focaliza a paróquia de São José do Rio das Mortes e fornece respostas preliminares para questões relativas às práticas de maternidade e de casamento, sugerindo como designações étnicas e de cor se consolidaram ao longo de várias gerações. Os achados apontam para a pre-
AbstractThis article addresses the complex themes of ethnicity and social classification in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Brazil. The use of large data bases, derived from independent primary sources, makes it possible to envision the outline of that complexity as it evolved in Minas Gerais. Ethnic/color and social categories are carefully examined and the logic of their use begins to emerge through the intersecting of names and individual attributes as they appear in baptismal and marriage registers, as well as in nominal lists. As a detailed case study of the parish of São José do Rio das Mortes, it furnishes preliminary answers to queries about maternity and marriage practices and sheds light on how ethnic and color designations were consolidated
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