Drawing on work in the social sciences on the handshake, this article examines the role of the handshake as a form of gestural communication and traces the changes in its relative importance in the ‘access rituals’ of early modern England. We lack a history of the handshake for early modern England. Such work as there is, is chronologically discontinuous and largely blind to the sociology of its performance. Working across the period from the later fifteenth into the eighteenth century, the article seeks to recover the chronological, spatial, social and gendered contours to the handshake. Discussing early modern understandings of the social and cultural meanings of touch and the hand, the article explores how performing a handshake could play a part in the representation, reproduction and negotiation of social and political relationships. Examining the micro-politics of shaking hands, the article offers a critical historical assessment of modern readings of the handshake as signalling friendship and social solidarity, analysing the changing significance of the ‘handshake entitlement’ as a ‘status-regulated’ gesture that helped both to enact and to challenge early modern social and political order.

中文翻译：

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近代早期英格兰的握手和触摸政治


借鉴社会科学中关于握手的研究，本文研究了握手作为一种手势交流形式的作用，并追溯了它在近代早期英格兰的“访问仪式”中相对重要性的变化。我们缺乏近代早期英格兰握手的历史。这样的作品在时间上是不连续的，而且在很大程度上对其表演的社会学视而不见。本文横跨从 15 世纪后期到 18 世纪的时期，试图恢复握手的时间、空间、社会和性别轮廓。本文讨论了早期现代人对触摸和手的社会和文化意义的理解，探讨了握手如何在社会和政治关系的表示、复制和协商中发挥作用。本文研究了握手的微观政治，对现代人将握手视为友谊和社会团结的标志进行了批判性的历史评估，分析了“握手权利”作为一种“受地位调节”的手势的变化意义，它有助于制定和挑战早期现代社会和政治秩序。