Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society

THE Braddick-Walter volume consists of an introduction by the joint editors, ten separate articles by the editors themselves, and eight others. The introduction, written in prose derived from the post-structuralist handbook in a style that can only be described as ‘reader-repellent’, draws heavily upon the works of the sociologist, J.C. Scott, author of Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985).The buzz-words are here: ‘agency’, ‘dominant discourses’, ‘public transcript’, ‘hegemonic discourse’, ‘multivalency of power relations’, and so on. We confront sentences like this: ‘In large part, acceptance of the naturalness of the landed classes’ right to rule depended upon the routine reproduction of the gestural and linguistic code demanded of their inferiors under the social grammar of deference'. While this is not unintelligible, it does make reading more laborious and plain unpleasant than it needs to be. This is a pity, for Braddick and Walter have interesting things to say

Deference · Honorific · Linguistics · Order (exchange · Peasant · Politeness · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · Subordination (linguistics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Irish and British Studies · Law · Philosophy · Scottish History and National Identity