This chapter analyzes how a network of discourses, sounds, images, and behaviors conveyed content in Colombian salons during the nineteenth century, producing a “world of meaning.” To do this, I study the salon as a part of a civilizing project, exploring how it articulated gender and musical practice under new forms of sociability while examining masculinity and femininity roles introduced and performed within the salon, often using music and dance as means for fostering social interaction among peers. Ultimately, such analysis suggests that the salon became a musical scene that played a prominent role in social reform as a medium for bridging multiple social class and distinction discourses with new ideas about civilization, modernization, social order, and progress. From this standpoint, salons became semiprivate spaces where music and socialization allowed the members of the new Colombian urban bourgeoisie to articulate their visions of the private and the public spheres.

Chapter 3 turns to the location of work, examining the spatial dimensions of work on various scales. It begins by looking at regional differences and the contrasts between rural and urban work. The former were remarkably muted, but rural–urban differences are clear. The importance of travel and types of transport is considered as an important element of work largely neglected in existing studies. The final part of the chapter examines workspaces, quantifying inside and outside work and considering the dimension of privacy.