Dr María Ángeles Martín Romera publishes new book, 'Grids of Power'
3 December 2019
Congratulations to Dr María Ángeles Martín Romera, whose new book 'Redes de poder. Las relaciones sociales de la oligarquía de Valladolid a finales de la Edad Media' ('Grids of Power. The Social Network of a Castilian city in the Late Middle Ages') was recently published!
UCL History is delighted to announce that Dr María Ángeles Martín Romera's new book, Redes de poder. Las relaciones sociales de la oligarquía de Valladolid a finales de la Edad Media (which, translated to English reads: Grids of Power. The Social Network of a Castilian city in the Late Middle Ages), was recently published by CSIC.
Urban oligarchies and the sources of their power are an important subject of debate among historians of the late Middle Ages. In the last decades historians have extensively debated the origin of these oligarchies, the way they gained and maintained control over urban institutions and the challenges they encountered, especially in the form of resistance from other social groups.
Redes de poder combines these historiographical questions with an innovative digital humanities approach. Considering social capital as the main source of power for urban oligarchies, the study turns to Social Network Analysis (SNA) to offer a new interpretation of the complex networks in which oligarchies were embedded during the transition from the late medieval to the early modern period. The book is both a fundamental contribution to the history of cities in medieval Castile and to the new interdisciplinary field of Historical Social Network Analysis.
The book’s focus is on Valladolid. By employing SNA, the political system of this city is reconstructed as a network through which services, favours and information circulate among an extended group of people that goes beyond prior more reductionist definitions of oligarchy. Unlike in the traditional studies on oligarchy, that group is neither limited to city officers, nor to male members of society. Furthermore, SNA provides a finer perception of the highly volatile character of the networks, refuting classic static visions of groups determined by lifelong offices. The conception of the oligarchy as a network offers new insight into major historiographical problems such as the definition of urban elites, the role of patron-client ties, the sources of oligarchic power, the factors for its perpetuation, the role of women in this context and two scenarios in which oligarchies exerted their dominion: the associations of urban knights and their relations with the commoners.