Book ID: CBB518052295

Ladies of Honor and Merit: Gender, Useful Knowledge, and Politics in Enlightened Spain (2022)

unapi

In the late eighteenth century, enlightened politicians and upper-class women in Spain debated the right of women to join one of the country’s most prominent scientific institutions: the Madrid Economic Society of Friends of the Country. Societies such as these, as Elena Serrano describes in her book, were founded on the idea that laypeople could contribute to the advancement of their country by providing “useful knowledge,” and their fellows often referred to themselves as improvers, or friends of the country. After intense debates, the duchess of Benavente, along with nine distinguished ladies, claimed, won, and exercised the right of women to participate in shaping the future of their nation by inaugurating the Junta de Damas de Honor y Mérito, or the Committee of Ladies of Honor and Merit. Ten years later, the Junta established a network of over sixty correspondents extending from Tenerife to Asturias and Austria to Cuba. With this book, Serrano tells the unknown story of how the duchess and her peers—who succeeded in creating the only known female branch among some five hundred patriotic societies in the eighteenth century—shaped Spanish scientific culture. Her study reveals how the Junta, by stressing the value of their feminine nature in their efforts to reform education, rural economy, and the poor, produced and circulated useful knowledge and ultimately crystallized the European improvement movement in Spain within an otherwise all-male context.

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Authors & Contributors
Casini, Paolo
Serrano, Elena
Sangiacomo, Andrea
Beers, Daan
Gianpiero Sironi
Passetti, Cristina
Concepts
Science and society
Science and politics
Scientific communities; interprofessional relations
Science and culture
Social networks
Knowledge circulation
Time Periods
18th century
Enlightenment
19th century
Early modern
Modern
20th century
Places
Europe
Italy
Central America
Scotland
Spain
Russia
Institutions
Electronic Enlightenment Project
Select Society of Edinburgh
Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk
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