Soy Latinoamerica
Monday November 25th, 2013 with Alejandro Hernandez
Interview with Prof. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera about the relevance of daily life in Latin America

We talked to Prof. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, from Carleton University, about daily life in Latin America or about the kinds of things that preoccupy people in their ordinary lives. For a long time, these details of everyday life were not considered worthy of study. More recently, inspired by theoreticians like Michel de Certeau, historians have begun to take a second look at the concept of daily life in history. This trend has been strongest in the Spanish speaking world. Themes might include food and drink history, sexuality, superstition and magic, demonism, fashion and the body, speech and insults, death, naming patterns, and bathing rituals. While seemingly mundane and unimportant, historians are discovering that such elements are, besides being fascinating and curious, the foundation for politics and economics.