A01=Claudio Veliz
anthropology
Author_Claudio Veliz
baroque mindset
british empire
Category=JHM
Category=NHK
Category=NHTQ
Category=NHTR
colonization
counter reformation
cultural achievements
cultural constructions
cultural decline
cultural studies
cultural traditions
culture
economic systems
economics
economy
english america
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
historical developments
imperialism
industrial revolution
latin american history
modern culture
north america
philosophy
sociology
south america
spanish america
the new world
world history
Product details
- ISBN 9780520083165
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 24 Jun 1994
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Claudio Veliz adopts the provocative metaphor of foxes and hedgehogs that Isaiah Berlin used to describe opposite types of thinkers. Applying this metaphor to modern culture, economic systems, and the history of the New World, Veliz provides an original and lively approach to understanding the development of English and Spanish America over the past 500 years. According to Veliz, the dominant cultural achievements of Europe's English- and Spanish-speaking people have been the Industrial Revolution and the Counter-Reformation, respectively. These overwhelming cultural constructions have strongly influenced the subsequent historical developments of their great cultural outposts in North and South America. The British brought to the New World a stubborn ability to thrive on diversity and change that was entirely consistent with their vernacular Gothic style. The Iberians, by contrast, brought a cultural tradition shaped like a vast baroque dome, a monument to their successful attempt to arrest the changes that threatened their imperial moment.
Veliz writes with erudition and wit, using a multitude of sources - historians and classical sociologists, Greek philosophers, today's newspaper sports pages, and modern literature - to support a novel explanation of the prosperity and expanding cultural influence of the gothic fox and the economic and cultural decline endured by the baroque hedgehog.
Claudio Veliz is University Professor and Professor of History at Boston University.
