Can I read Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920 (American Encounters/Global Interactions) on EtoBox?

Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920 (American Encounters/Global Interactions) by Eileen J. Suárez Findlay is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920 (American Encounters/Global Interactions) about?

Summary:Feminists, socialists, Afro-Puerto Rican activists, and elite politicians join laundresses, prostitutes, and dissatisfied wives in populating the pages of Imposing Decency. Through her analyses of Puerto Rican anti-prostitution campaigns, attempts at reforming marriage, and working-class ideas about free love, Eileen J. Suárez Findlay exposes the race-related double standards of sexual norms and practices in Puerto Rico between 1870 and 1920, the period that witnessed Puerto Rico's shift from Spanish to U.S. colonialism.In showing how political projects and alliances in Puerto Rico were affected by racially contingent definitions of "decency" and "disreputability," Findlay argues that attempts at moral reform and the state's repression of "sexually dangerous" women were weapons used in batttles between elite and popular, American and Puerto Rican, and black and white. Based on a thorough analysis of popular and elite discourses found in both literature and official archives, Findlay contends that racialized sexual norms and practices were consistently a central component in the construction of social and political orders. The campaigns she analyzes include an attempt at mor

Author

Eileen J. Suárez Findlay

Publisher

Duke University Press Books

Published

1999

Language

EN

ISBN

9780822323754

Subjects

History, Sociology, Political Science

Rating

3.65 / 5 (67 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14