Organisers: Nikolaus Böttcher and Nino Vallen (Freie Universität Berlin).

People tell different stories about themselves and the world to express what they believe are or ought to be their rightful privileges. With global integration and growing inequality fuelling tensions between competing claims of entitlement, it is necessary to understand how these narratives are produced, interact and contribute toward the shaping of social realities. This workshop examines this nexus between distributional struggle, self-fashioning and the making of the world in the context of Iberian globalisation. 

Bringing together scholars of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, the workshop explores the following questions. How did the ongoing Spanish and Portuguese expansion in Africa, Asia and the Americas change or contribute to the development of new social categories defining peoples’ claims to rewards, offices and honours? What strategies did actors adopt to present themselves as worthy of certain privileges, and what role did these actors’ mobility or immobility play? How did people’s experiences in or knowledge of the world help them to influence discussions about who merited what share of the community’s benefits?

Presentations and discussions will be held in English and Spanish.

The programme is available here.