Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History

Glick, Thomas F.; Pi‐Sunyer, Oriol

doi:10.1017/s0010417500005247

Cited by 58 publications

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“…I also have no quarrel with their view that 'Research on growth and change should define a local region as the primary unit of analysis, in order to deal effectively with local structures which transcend community boundaries ' (1972: 330). In some of my own publications (Glick and Pi-Sunyer, 1969;Pi-Sunyer, 1970; I have stressed the importance of approaching Spain from a regional perspective, with respect both to the contemporary situation and also to its historical antecedents. Some years ago (Pi-Sunyer, 1967), I suggested that the regional approach would yield worthwhile results in the study of contemporary Mexican society, and not the least its social and economic dimensions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elites and Noncorporate Groups in the European Mediterranean: a Reconsideration of the Catalan Case

Pi‐Sunyer

1974

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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In a recent article in this journal, Peter Schneider, Jane Schneider and Edward Hansen (1972) examine the role of regional elites and noncorporate groups in the European Mediterranean and proceed to elaborate a model that should allow us to understand more clearly the dynamics of social and economic change in underdeveloped peripheral regions. The two areas which they have selected for detailed consideration, and which consequently form the empirical basis for a model of broader applicability, are Western Sicily and Catalonia. Sicily I know only from the literature, but my impression is that it can more realistically be regarded as an underdeveloped peripheral region with the structural attributes described and analyzed by the authors. Catalonia, though, is a different matter, and it is to the Catalan case that I will be addressing myself.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elites and Noncorporate Groups in the European Mediterranean: a Reconsideration of the Catalan Case

Pi‐Sunyer

1974

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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“…Even before Franco's death, scholars inspired by Castro saw potential in the idea of convivencia once it had been freed from the constraints of such a complex, intramural debate on Spanish identity 7 . In a seminal article, ‘Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History’ (Glick & Pi‐Sunyer 1969), Thomas Glick and Oriol Pi‐Sunyer applauded Castro's determination to address cultural blending in medieval Spain, but lamented his lack of exposure to the anthropological theories that would have allowed him to identify the mechanisms of acculturation that actually made convivencia work. Siding with Castro in his assault on the ‘eternal Spain’ school represented by Sánchez‐Albornoz, they argued that cultures, far from being monolithic and static, are subject to constant reconfiguration, much of which is driven by their contact with and permeability to other cultures.…”

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“…Siding with Castro in his assault on the ‘eternal Spain’ school represented by Sánchez‐Albornoz, they argued that cultures, far from being monolithic and static, are subject to constant reconfiguration, much of which is driven by their contact with and permeability to other cultures. From their anthropological vantage point, Glick and Pi‐Sunyer saw Castro's convivencia as a form of ‘stabilized pluralism’, a ‘stage of arrested fusion or incomplete assimilation’ that was inherently unstable, ‘at best a modus vivendi , not an end of the values of either bloc’ (Glick & Pi‐Sunyer 1969, p. 153). Hence, the inevitability of the dramatic shift from the convivencia of medieval Spain to the ‘hostility, assimilation, and finally expulsion of the minority by the dominant culture’ that characterized late fifteenth‐ and sixteenth‐century Spain.…”

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“…Hence, the inevitability of the dramatic shift from the convivencia of medieval Spain to the ‘hostility, assimilation, and finally expulsion of the minority by the dominant culture’ that characterized late fifteenth‐ and sixteenth‐century Spain. From the perspective of Glick and Pi‐Sunyer, Spanish history lent itself particularly well to a historical application of anthropological theory precisely because it offered ‘a whole range of contact situations, some essentially destructive (resulting from the overweening dominance of one of the two cultures), but others profoundly constructive (in periods when the forces of each were more nearly equal)’ (Glick & Pi‐Sunyer 1969, p. 141).…”

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Convivencia in Medieval Spain: A Brief History of an Idea

Wolf

2009

Religion Compass

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Convivencia refers to the 'coexistence' of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities in medieval Spain and by extension the cultural interaction and exchange fostered by such proximity. The term first appeared as part of a controversial thesis about Spanish historical identity advanced by Américo Castro in 1948. Since then interest in the idea of convivencia has spread, fueled in part by increased attention to multi-culturalism and rising concern about religiously framed acts of violence. The application of social scientific models has gone a long way toward clarifying the mechanisms of acculturation at work in medieval Spain and tempering the tendency to romanticize convivencia.Convivencia refers to the 'coexistence' of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities in medieval Spain and by extension the cultural interaction and exchange fostered by such proximity. While it first emerged as part of a famous debate about Spanish historical identity that punctuated the Franco years, the notion that these three religious communities got along better in medieval Spain than they did at other times and in other places is older than that. The nineteenth century witnessed both the Romantic fascination with Muslim Spain epitomized by Washington Irving and the more scholarly projects of French and Spanish Arabists, who saw in the cosmopolitan culture of Muslim Spain the antithesis of Christian Spain, past and present p. 17). At the same time, Jews in Central Europe who were fascinated by the heights achieved by their Sephardic counterparts in medieval Spain tended to credit, among other factors, an unusually high level of tolerance on the part of the Andalusian authorities. True or not, such claims helped Jewish apologists put in greater relief the poor track record of modern European governments in the years preceding emancipation (Cohen 1991).It was the Spanish philologist and literary historian Américo Castro (1885-1972) who first used the term convivencia as part of the controversial theory about Spanish cultural identity that he launched in his España en su historia: cristianos, moros, y judíos (Buenos Aires, 1948). 1 Like so many

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“…In analyzing how the Canaries and the Indies were affected by a medieval notion of colonization, it is useful to rethink medieval history. Glick (1969) suggested that the Reconquista be analyzed as a process of acculturation. The value of his approach is the importance it places on adaptation to economic and social circumstances.…”

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The Inter-Atlantic Paradigm: The Failure of Spanish Medieval Colonization of the Canary and Caribbean Islands

Stevens-Arroyo

1993

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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The year 1492 in Spanish history is an unforgettable date. Within the span of a few months, Spain ended a struggle for political unity on the peninsula lasting centuries and embarked upon a colonial enterprise that was to encircle the globe. But 1492 seduces the imagination, inclining one to read history's momentous consequences into the minds of the protagonists at the time. The historian is tempted to make the actors of 1492 larger than life, multiplying the importance of their actions by the eventual consequences, but this would hinder an understanding of 1492 from the perspective of the people who experienced it.

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Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History

Cited by 58 publications

References 7 publications

Elites and Noncorporate Groups in the European Mediterranean: a Reconsideration of the Catalan Case

Elites and Noncorporate Groups in the European Mediterranean: a Reconsideration of the Catalan Case

Convivencia in Medieval Spain: A Brief History of an Idea

The Inter-Atlantic Paradigm: The Failure of Spanish Medieval Colonization of the Canary and Caribbean Islands

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