ABSTRACT
From the general description of social orders and brief case studies of particular social groups in the previous section of this book (Part Two), we turn now to a different perspective of Spain's social history. Here, and in the other chapters of the third part of this book, I will explore specific aspects of social interaction, or, to borrow Braudel's title for his great three-volume study of early modern European society, the structures of everyday life. My aims in this conduding section of the book are twofold. First, I wish to describe the tenor of late medieval and early modern life in Spain, to attempt to determine how social and cultural manifestations changed over time, and why. Second, I wish to foeus on specific social and cultural manifestations: festivals, violence, diet, fashion and attitudes towards the sacred as sites for the encounter of different social orders, as places for social exchange. Although the study of such cultural and historical phenomena as festivals, violence, etc. is in itself a valid concern for social historians, my interest here goes beyond the merely descriptive. Rather, I wish to raise questions as to how different social groups interacted through festive and/or violent exchanges. Wh at was the effect of these performative events on different groups? How did each group participate? Wh at did they bring to these events? What did they take out of them? This chapter and the next one examine the role of festivals in the social history of Spain before proceeding to other eultural and social aspects (violence and daily life) in late medieval and early modern Spain.
