Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru

by Kathryn Burns

Book Overview

In Colonial Habits Kathryn Burns transforms our view of nuns as marginal recluses, making them central actors on the colonial stage. Beginning with the 1558 founding of South America's first convent, Burns shows that nuns in Cuzco played a vital part in subjugating Incas, creating a creole elite, and reproducing an Andean colonial order in which economic and spiritual interests were inextricably fused.
Based on unprecedented archival research,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822322919
• ISBN13: 9780822322917
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A subject that needs to be explored

Katheryn Burns has written a great book. Her discussion of the spiritual economy is innovative and needs to be explored by more people. Burns uncovers a history that has been neglected by most historians but is integral to one's understanding of colonial Latin America. In short, this is must read for anyone interested in the subject.