Patrons Clients And Friends

About interpersonal relations in society.

A bold new study of politics and power in 17th-century France, this book argues that the French Crown extended its control over the provinces and laid the foundations for a centralized state by removing patronage power from the provincial governors and putting it instead in the hands of newly-created provincial power brokers--regional notables who cooperated with the Paris ministers in exchange for their patronage.

Patrons, Clients, and Empire challenges the stereotypes of despotic imperial power in Asian, African, and Pacific colonies by analysing the relationship between rulers and rulers on both sides of the imperial equation. It seeks an answer to the question: how were European officials able to govern so many societies for so long? Rejecting the usual explanations of 'collaboration' and indirect rule', this study looks to pre-imperial structures in the indigenous hierarchies which supplied patrimonial models of chieftaincy for territorial government. For nawabs, chiefs, emirs, sultans, and their officials and followers there were dynastic and economic advantages in accepting the terms of European over-rule, as well as the threat of deposition. For European officials, few in numbers and with limited military and financial resources, there were ready-made systems of local government that could be co-opted, reformed, or left relatively untouched. Both sides played politics as patrons and clients within a dual system of administration based on a mixture of force and self-interest. Surveying a wide variety of cases and employing a patron-client model, this study embraces pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial politics in new states. It covers the chronology of early European dependency on local rulers; the reasons for reversal of status among chiefs and administrators; the longer period of political bargaining over access to local resources in terms of land, labour, and taxes; and the ultimate fate of indigenous rulers in the period of party politics leading to independence.

Fourteen members of The Context Group honor Bruce J. Malina and his scholarship in this volume by following his consistent example of developing or using explicit social scientific models to interpret documents from the ancient Mediterranean world. Ordinary features of that cultural world such as gossip, reciprocity, a pervasive military presence, the power of women, and becoming a follower of Jesus stand out with greater clarity in the Bible when a reader understands the cultural matrix in which such social dynamics function. These essays reflect The Context Group’s more than twenty years of collaborative experience in researching the cultural context of the Bible. New insights are built on the solidly established foundations of their earlier cross-cultural studies. Readers will find the individual essays enlightening and challenging. Taken as a whole they form a valuable resource and a stimulating and helpful aid to further study.

Jonathan Marshall, born in 1978, earned his PhD in 2008. He has taught courses at Biola University (La Mirada, CA) and Eternity Bible College (Simi Valley, CA); currently, he serves as Associate Pastor in the Camarillo Evangelical Free Church (EFCA; Camarillo, CA).

Honors the great range and penetrating insights of Vernon Robbins' work.

Jerome Neyrey clarifies what praise, honor, and glory meant to Matthew and his audience. He examines the traditional literary forms for bestowing such praise and the conventional grounds for awarding honor and praise in Matthew's world.

Cuban politics has long been remarkable for its passionate intensity, and yet few scholars have explored the effect of emotions on political attitudes and action in Cuba or elsewhere. This book thus offers an important new approach by bringing feelings back into the study of politics and showing how the politics of passion and affection have interacted to shape Cuban history throughout the twentieth century. Damián Fernández characterizes the politics of passion as the pursuit of a moral absolute for the nation as a whole. While such a pursuit rallied the Cuban people around charismatic leaders such as Fidel Castro, Fernández finds that it also set the stage for disaffection and disconnection when the grand goal never fully materialized. At the same time, he reveals how the politics of affection-taking care of family and friends outside the formal structures of government-has paradoxically both undermined state regimes and helped them remain in power by creating an informal survival network that provides what the state cannot or will not.