Publications by David Sowell
My research concerns have focused upon Latin American societies in the midst of economic, political, and social change. My dissertation research focused upon how artisans in Bogotá articulated their interests during the nineteenth century, a time in which Colombia’s entry into the Atlantic economy threatened their economic interests. This led me into a study of an 1893 riot and the general topic of social violence.
Recently I’ve studied the social history of medicine in Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. One research project focused upon the healer Miguel Perdomo Neira and how his method of healing could be located within the introduction of scientific medicine into the region in the mid-nineteenth century. My current project focuses upon the development of public health agencies in Yucatán, Mexico, between 1870 and 1950. This project links the state of Yucatán with the federal government in Mexico City, various agencies in the United States, and the broad Atlantic medical community. It also investigates how public health became a vehicle of penetrating the interior of Yucatán, bringing Maya peoples into a more intimate relationship with the dominant white society.
- The Tale of Healer Miguel Perdomo Neira: Healing, Ideologies, and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Andes (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001).
- Contact, Conquest, and Consequences: A Lecture Series in Commemoration of the Quincentennial of 1492 (Huntingdon, PA: Juniata College, 1993).
- The Early Colombian Labor Movement: Artisans and Politics in Bogota, 1832-1919 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992).
- "Bogotazo de 1893, el rol de los Artesanos," "Artesanado, Impacto de las reformas liberals Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile," "Peru: Ramon Castilla y la resistencia artesanal contra las reformas liberales," forthcoming as entries in the five volume Latin American Political Repertory, ed. by Torcuato S. Di Tella and Patricia Chomnalez, to be published by Editorial Emece, in Argentina
- "Artisans: Latin America," forthcoming in the Encyclopedia of the Modern World, Peter N. Sterns, editor in chief, Oxford University Press.
- "The Mirror of Public Opinion: The Image of Simon Bolivar in the United States Press, 1825-1831" ("El Espejo de la opinion publica: La imagen de Bolivar en la prensa de los Estados Unidos"), Revista de Historia de America, No. 134 (Enero-Junio 2004), 165-83.
- "Contending Medical Ideologies and State Formation: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Medical Pluralism in Contemporary Colombia," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Winter 2003), 77: 900-26.
- "Andanzas de un curandero en Colombia durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX," Entre curanderos y medicos. Cultura y enfermedad en America Latina moderna, ed. by Diego Armus (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2002), 71-103.
- "La lucha politica-laboral: Artesanos, industriales y obreros en Bogota, 1904-1919," trans. by Isidro Vanegas, forthcoming in a book on socialism and the labor movement in early twentieth century Colombia.
- "Recent Perspectives on the Latin American City," Journal of Urban History, 24:6 (September 1998), 764-767.
- "The 1893 bogotazo: Artisans and Public Violence in Late Nineteenth Century Bogota," Journal of Latin American Studies, 21 (May 1989), 267-82. Reprinted in translation in Revuelta en las ciudades: Politicas populares en America Latina (Mexico City: Biblioteca de signos, 2004), 167-88. Reprinted in Riots in the Cities: Popular Politics and the Urban Poor in Latin America, 1765-1910, ed. by Sylvia Marina Arrom and Servando Ortoll with a conclusion by Charles Tilly (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1996), 137-54.