Las múltiples dimensiones de un concreto: Prácticas, actores, redes y contratos. Notas sobre el abordaje del crédito en los márgenes hispanoamericanos de Antiguo Régimen [Buenos Aires, siglo XVII]

Abstract

In this article we propose to adress some of the interrelated dimensions that contributed to the configuration of the credit practices in Buenos Aires during the seventeenth century. The incidence of an estamental social framework; the morphology acquired by the net of interpersonal credit links, and the links among this net and the established social networks; the role of the notarial institution and the functions of the contracts offered; the legal constraints of the economy of the seventeenth century's Buenos Aires: each of them conforms some of the items that provided, to the formalized credit, a unique social and economic role. An academic publication dedicated at studying pre-capitalist societies, therefore, offers a good opportunity for raising some of the problematic issues related to our investigation. With this presentation we expect a critical dialogue to enrich the perspectives here offered. Perspectives founded in the sources but, still, maintained at the level of our working hypothesis