Empowering Interactions

Speaking the Language of Friendship: Partnerships in the Political Construction of the Late Sixteenth‐Century South‐East Charcas Frontier

“…The approach followed here is focused on frontiers as places constructed from below and through complex processes of appropriation carried out by individuals and groups in daily interactions (Herzog, 2015: 8), which highlights the importance of political agency (Nesvig, 2018; Escribano Páez, 2020). In the early modern Iberian worlds, it was in relation to those able to govern – understood at the time as those able to establish law and deliver justice, and capable of fostering and engaging in communicative processes emerging from diverse and reciprocal interests, described by Holenstein as ‘empowering interactions’, in doing so (Blockmans, Holenstein and Mathieu, 2009: 25–28) – and in line with their concepts of status, race, and religion (regardless of whether they were Chiriguana chiefs or Spanish captains–) that agents defined themselves, negotiating and contesting identities and labels. Along these ‘frontiers of possession’, where life was precarious, agency and political posturing, more than identity and continuity, provided means – the logics of subsistence – for political and social survival (Martín Marcos, 2023: 1).…”

Kings and aristocratic elites: communicating power and status in medieval Norway

“…19 The interactive approach stresses not only the supportive and submissive role of the aristocracy towards princes but also how, through new channels and vectors of communication, interactions created new opportunities for their ambitions and agencies. 20 Through the examination of various kind of rituals and symbolic performances involving Norwegian kings and aristocracy, this paper's contribution is precisely to outline how these changes marked as much how power was expressed in a new fashion as how its very construction was established on new and former premises.…”

Interactions et relations d’interdépendance dans la formation de l’État moderne

“…Depuis la seconde moitié du 20 e siècle, l'historiographie s'est considérablement enrichie de travaux portant sur la genèse de l'État moderne. Les deux programmes de recherche menés de 1984 à 1993 au CNRS et à l'European Science Foundation (ESF) par Jean-Philippe Genet et Wim Blockmans ont contribué à éclairer les principaux auteurs ainsi que les différentes traditions ayant marqué l'historiographie de l'État moderne 1 . La plus connue d'entre elles est sans doute celle basée sur les travaux du sociologue allemand Max Weber.…”