Set in an era marked by profound political upheaval, Monica Hardin's new work invites the reader to explore the more intimate upheavals of households in Guadalajara in the first half of the nineteenth century. Through the careful coding of census data, Hardin demonstrates the mobility of individuals and kin groups during this period. Making methodological as well as historiographical interventions, the author presents transience as a regular feature of urban life. Whether rich or poor, Spanish or indigenous, native to the city or newly arrived, tapatíos (residents of Guadalajara) moved more often than they stayed put.
Hardin is frank about the constraints of her project. Her aim is not to elaborate on why or how individuals and households moved to, from, and within Guadalajara. Rather, she seeks to demonstrate that they did so. This she does by tracking heads of household between the 1821 and 1822 city censuses as coded...
