If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

“One can suggest that the accumulation of small investments could have been an important element in the financing of the district's main commercial enterprise.”

This week’s readings were all about finding the object and subject of a particular argument. It was also about deciphering the structure that is used in a particular paper. The object of the research is the question that the researcher is trying to answer. The subject of the argument is how the researcher answers the question. The structure is how the researcher frames the narrative to explain their argument. The evidence that they use is how they support the argument that they are trying to explain.

In this week’s readings there were two examples these structures. The first was Kimberly Gauderman’s article on women in textiles in seventeenth century Quito. Gauderman uses a very strict structure that is framed much like a funnel. This structure also helps her to bring together her argument that women’s economic lives were not actually set apart by their gender but by their ability to use economic prosperity and work. But, what gave even more support to Guaderman’s argument was at what cost these women gained their economic stability. Her evidence through court cases and notarial records. These revealed while the elite women who actually owned may not have been involved in the day to day lives of their obraje, there were maestros of lower social status that were involved. Fueled by the demand for their textiles they pushed the indigenous people in their care very hard. An important part of this that is revealed is female-to-female relations. Women were not any easier on their female employees because they were women. In many ways they were harder, accusing them when they became pregnant. Another gender relation that is revealed is that women could hold their own in court as well as men. Gauderman’s article divulges that women gained equality but at the expense of other women’s lives.

In another article written about the working class in Victorian England, it states that E.P. Thompson stated, “everything, from their schools to their shops, their chapels to their amusements, was turned into a battle-ground of class.” E.P. Thompson’s object was what the determining factor behind the English crowd’s riots were. He states how they are not just an outburst determined by nothing. They were hungry because of bread prices and realized their voice in the larger political spectrum. He talks about how in thinking about economy not through capitalism but through a moral economy. Relies more on the cultural and justified reasoning behind economy then a laissez-faire type economy. His ideas are much supported because there were starving populations that did not rise up such as the Irish during the potato blight.

Till next week,

matteavs