Emphasizing a transimperial exchange, Schroer, Hayes, and Godfrey present case studies from four distinct geographic nodes. Schroer first demonstrates how inhabitants of seventeenth-century Castile and Mexico acted as frontline arbiters of royal sumptuary laws, shaping and contesting their enforcement in practice. Through an unlikely comparison between an Indigenous noble from southwestern Mexico and a member of the Basque elite in northern Spain, she shows how two individuals from opposite sides of the empire engaged in parallel legal strategies to assert their right to wear prohibited attire.

Reliance on material objects as tools of negotiation was not unique to Mexico. Katherine Godfrey examines how mestiza women in sixteenth-century New Granada shaped their social and economic worlds through both Indigenous and European goods. Drawing on the estate records of Leonor Rodríguez, an influential resident of Santafé de Bogotá, Godfrey analyzes how personal assets reflected wide-ranging commercial interests and financial acumen. Whether purchasing local cotton mantas, imported European textiles, or coveted Andean emeralds, Rodríguez forged meaningful transimperial connections through her consumption and investment practices.

The use of material possessions to navigate social, political, and economic boundaries also extended into Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities in Peru. Marcella Hayes considers how native and Black confraternities in seventeenth-century Lima mobilized tangible resources such as devotional objects, currency, and credit networks to support members in need. When funds were scarce, these organizations relied on reciprocal relationships with local merchants to sustain regular cash flow. In this way, confraternities functioned simultaneously as welfare institutions for marginalized free and enslaved members and as dynamic economic bodies that facilitated the circulation of religious objects and money.

Taken together, the panel highlights the everyday strategies through which imperial subjects interpreted and reshaped social, political, and economic norms. Material practices emerged as crucial arenas for asserting respectability, managing financial pressures, claiming honor, and resisting marginalization. Through their conversation, Schroer, Hayes, Godfrey, and Domínguez Torres will contribute to broader historiographical discussions about the role of material possessions in constructing and contesting power. By placing these conversations in comparative dialogue, the panel offers a valuable interdisciplinary discussion that will appeal to scholars of early modern material culture, the Iberian world, and colonial Latin America.