In an analysis that promises to be controversial, Man to Man: Desire, Homosociality, and Authority in Late-Roman Manhood surveys the presence of same-sex desire between men in the later Roman empire. Most accounts of recent years have either noted that sexual desire between men was forbidden or they have ignored it. This book argues that desire between men was known and that it was a way to express friendship, patronage, solidarity, and other important relationships among elite males in late antiquity. The evocation of this desire and its possible attendant corporeal satisfactions made it a compelling metaphor for friendship. A man’s grandeur could also be portrayed metaphorically as sexual attractiveness, and the substantial status differences often seen in late antiquity could be ameliorated by a superior using amatory language to address an inferior.
 
At the same time, however, there was a marked ambivalence about same-sex desire and sexual behavior between men, and indeed same-sex sexual behavior was criminalized as it had never been before. While rejection and condemnation may seem to indicate a decisive distancing between authority and this desire and behavior, authority gained power from maintaining a relation to them. Demonstrating knowledge of the actual mechanics of sex between men suggested to a witness that there was nothing unknown to the authority making the demonstration: authority that knew of scandalous masculine sexual pleasure could project its power pretty much anywhere.
 
This startling dissonance between positive uses of same-sex desire between men and its criminalization in one and the same moment—a dissonance which recent discussions have been unable to address—requires further investigation, and this book supplies it.

The Manipulation of Consent is a major contribution to our knowledge of the mechanisms by which elites instill in the lower classes the beliefs, values, and attitudes that legitimate their subordinate position in the social order.  Youssef Cohen explores the case of Brazil, where the working class was relatively quiescent in the face of the authoritarian regime established by force in 1964.  Drawing on recent advances in the theory of the state and the study of power relations, as well as on modern methods of social inquiry, he reveals the techniques of ideological control in the concrete setting of modern Brazilian society.  The result is an unusually illuminating case study that blends theoretical exposition, conceptually informed historical analysis, and a wealth of emperical data.  The Manipulation of Consent makes a substantial addition to the understanding of Brazilian politics, the study of power relations, and the theory of the state.

What happens when voters and their representatives don’t agree?

Combining social, political, and economic history, Louisa Schell Hoberman examines a neglected period in Mexico’s colonial past, providing the first book-length study of the period’s merchant elite and its impact on the evolution of Mexico.
Through extensive archival research, Hoberman brings to light new data that illuminate the formation, behavior, and power of the merchant class in New Spain. She documents sources and uses of merchant wealth, tracing the relative importance of mining, agriculture, trade, and public office. By delving into biographical information on prominent families, Hoberman also reveals much about the longevity of the first generation’s social and economic achievements.
The author’s broad analysis situates her study in the overall environment in which the merchants thrived. Among the topics discussed are the mining and operation of the mint, Mexico’s political position vis-a-vis Spain, and the question of an economic depression in the seventeenth century.

How social and political power was wielded in order to build Moundville