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Paolo Grassi
Anuac
The anatomy of houses: Materialities of being at home
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Thematic section: The anatomy of houses: Materialities of being at home
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Paolo Grassi
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10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3869
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Politecnico di Milano, Italy
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The anatomy of houses: Materialities of being at home
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                                     2021 | ANUAC. VOL. 10, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2021: 111-128




The anatomy of houses
Materialities of being at home
Giacomo POZZI
IULM, Milano
Paolo GRASSI
Politecnico di Milano




ABSTRACT: This introductory essay proposes a reflection that discusses, reframes, and
presents the thematic section hosted in this volume, that investigates houses at the
intersection between recent trends in the anthropology of the house, the study of
material culture, and the investigation of contemporary socio-cultural transformations.
In the first paragraph, we contextualize the growing contemporary interest in houses.
In the second, following Carsten, we sustain the idea that houses themselves should be
placed at the heart of a research agenda, we present the approach proposed in this
thematic section, we clarify what are houses and what distinguishes them in relation to
homes and households and how, in the history of anthropology, these “objects” have
been investigated. In the third paragraph, reviewing the main approaches to the theme,
we delve into the notion of société à maisons elaborated by Lévi-Strauss. The fourth
paragraph places the concreteness of houses back at the centre of the analysis, where
normative and material forms are mediated, reproduced, and even contested or
negotiated. In the last, we present the three articles hosted in this thematic section –
and the afterword discussing them – that explore how houses and their materiality
modify the world and deal with its transformations.
KEYWORDS: ANTHROPOLOGY; HOUSE; BEING AT HOME; MATERIALITY; MATERIAL CULTURE.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giacomo Pozzi, Paolo Grassi
The anatomy of houses: Materialities of being at home
2021 | ANUAC. VOL. 10, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2021: 111-128.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3869
112                                                              GIACOMO POZZI, PAOLO GRASSI




      A growing interest
   In 1991 Mary Douglas published an essay interpreting houses as embryonic
communities1. Through a pragmatic investigation of the domestic
environment and reflection on the categories derived from Max Weber’s
Verstehende Soziologie, the anthropologist set out to re-conceptualise the
notion of solidarity and show the mechanisms of domestic production and
reproduction. The opening sentence of Douglas’s essay reads: “The more we
reflect on the tyranny of the house, the less surprising it is that the young
wish to be free of its scrutiny and control” (Douglas 1991: 287). Setting aside
the second part of the sentence, it is fascinating to note that the first part –
if taken almost as a suggestion – points to a radically opportune way of
thinking about these last two years in which the relationship among home,
individual and society has emerged as a pivotal aspect of all of our everyday
lives. At best, houses have constituted a place of protection from the
pandemic, a workspace, hub of social relations, space for care and affection,
and shelter from fear and pain. However, houses only represented all this
only for some of the people who, first of all, had access to adequate housing.
On the contrary, for all those who were not in possession of houses for
whatever reason, the “tyranny of the house” manifested with two-fold
violence generated by the daily presence of an absence.
   This consideration does not stem from some academic habit of thought
produced by an excessively situated and specialist gaze. Rather, there seems
to be a growing interest in this ambiguous and everyday object cutting across
society in the current moment. In Italy, for example, the literary arts (along
with other fields) have recently displayed a certain attention to the theme of
houses, seeking to investigate their “hidden sides”, stories and social values.
Given these premises, the house seems to represent a productive narrative
metaphor for reflecting on society as a whole. One text currently enjoying
great success with the public is Il libro delle case [The book of houses] (2021)
by Andrea Bajani. The book is presented in the form of a series of seventy-

1. This article is the result of a joint process of reflection between the two authors. However,
sections can be divided as follows: Giacomo Pozzi: A growing interest; Société à maisons;
Materialities; Paolo Grassi: Listening to houses; The contributions: a multilevel analysis of
the house. This publication was made possible by funds from the IULM University of Milan,
Department of Humanities. We would like to thank the reviewers and editorial board of
Anuac for their constructive comments on this paper.


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THE ANATOMY OF HOUSES                                                           113


eight domestic scenes spread across approximately forty houses. Bajani’s
idea is not altogether original: it is about telling a story by describing the
places where it takes place. In the contemporary pandemic period, however,
this narrative structure appears especially engaging because it makes it easy
for readers to identify with the subject. Another paradigmatic case is the
novel Casa è dove fa male [Home is where it hurts] by Massimo Cuomo
(2021). Here, it is the voice of a four-storey building on the outskirts of
Mestre (Venice) that, with a clear and merciless gaze, recounts the lives of
the tenants inhabiting the seven apartments that make up the building.
Thanks to the narrator’s privileged gaze, the reader enjoys the chance to
secretly step inside the houses of other people, a prototypical obsession of
this historical moment in which we are only allowed to (forcibly) experience
our own homes. Other examples include Non è mai troppo tardi [It is never
too late] by Stefania Russo (2020), a novel set in a residential complex called
“the Monster” on the outskirts of Milan; La vicina gentile [The kind
neighbour] by Aurelia Rossi (2020), focused on neighbourhood relations; and
Condominio Arenella by Mariavittoria Picone (2020) that depicts life scenes
from a Neapolitan condominium.
   However, it is not only the literary arts that have sought to capture the
“imprisoned” lives unfolding across contemporary Italy: even Italian cinema
seems to dispaly a certain interest. One example is Nanni Moretti’s latest
movie, Tre piani [Three floors] (2021). Inspired by the Israeli writer Eshkol
Nevo’s novel, Moretti outlines life inside a bourgeois Roman apartment
building, beginning from a dramatic event that upsets its equilibrium. The
building not only represents the setting of the action, it is also one of the
protagonists of the story, a living space involved in the whirlwind of
relationships that bind together its inhabitants.
   The Italian case, although not necessarily comprehensive, seems to be
paradigmatic of a wider collective awareness: houses, which constitute a
central element in most human societies, stands out as a necessary good
and, at the same time – as in the case of the pandemic – a necessary evil, a
limiting and limited place.

Listening to houses
   The thematic section organised by Anuac in this volume investigates the
question of houses from a peculiar perspective, one developed at the
intersection between recent trends in the anthropology of the house, the
study of material culture, and the investigation of contemporary socio-
cultural transformations. This section grew out of a panel held at the 14th
SIEF (International Society for Ethnology and Folklore) Congress in Santiago

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de Compostela in spring 2019. The panel, entitled “Listening to Houses:
Tracking Politics, Poetics and Practices of Being at Home in the
Contemporary World”, stemmed from the editors’ research interests2 in
dwelling, urban life, and socio-economic marginality based on field research
in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Cape Verde, Portugal and Italy.
Through our fieldwork, we essentially realized how houses condition and are
conditioned by the trajectories of our research participants with their
opportunities, chances, resources, and difficulties. By observing and
analysing the demolition of informal neighbourhoods and consequent forced
relocation of their residents in Portugal, eviction measures and squatting in
Italy, urban regeneration policies on the outskirts of a Cape Verdean city,
and the security logic-based and segregation-generating dynamics of
Dominican and Guatemalan slums, we were able to grasp the profound
significance of domestic structures and living in the daily lives of these
groups.
   Reflecting on these topics, we were thrilled by Carsten’s recent argument
that contemporary anthropology should be more engaged in “listening to
houses” (Carsten 2018). According to this perspective, houses should not be
considered static objects, but rather “interconnections between individual
trajectories, kinship and the state” (Ivi: 103). In other words, the politics,
poetics, and practices related to houses represent a privileged standpoint for
uncovering how socio-cultural changes are materialized, embodied and felt
in everyday life by social actors. Carsten’s assertion places the house itself at
the heart of a research agenda. Drawing on this perspective, we organised
our panel at the SIEF Congress, inviting the participants to explore how
societal transformations influence perceptions, praxes and ideas of houses
and, dialectically, how certain perceptions, praxes and ideas of houses can
act in turn on those same dimensions. Seven researchers from different
European countries participated in the panel and three of them agreed to
continue the discussion by contributing to this thematic session.
2. Our research interest focuses on the economic and social significance acquired by houses
in the social housing neighborhoods, informal settlements, and marginal urban areas in
which we have been working for several years. Since 2012 Giacomo Pozzi has been
conducting ethnographic research in contexts characterized by housing vulnerability and
territorial stigmatization. Namely, he has been working in Portugal (Amadora, Lisbon), Italy
(Milan) and Cape Verde (Mindelo, São Vicente Island). His analyses focus on the
entanglements between individual trajectories, welfare policies, and marginalization. Paolo
Grassi has been working in San Siro, one of Milan’s largest social housing neighborhoods,
since 2017. There, he developed a research project on structural violence and urban space
(see Fava and Grassi 2020), collaborating with an action-research group made up of
urbanists, architects and anthropologists called “Mapping San Siro” (www.mapping-
sansiro.polimi.it, accessed on 01/12/2021)


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THE ANATOMY OF HOUSES                                                            115


   The essays presented in this section question the value, meaning, and
social, symbolic, and relational role of the house in three different
ethnographic contexts, setting off from a profound interpretation of the
material dimension of human shelter. Our intent was to fruitfully respond to
Carsten’s proposal using an ethnographic and comparative perspective that
would highlight the differences and specificities found in several social
contexts. Basically, we understood that it was necessary to indicate an “entry
point” to begin listening to houses once again: just underlying the ever-
present circularity between (built) space and social relations was not
enough. We found this entry point specifically in the materiality of houses,
their construction and the elements of which they are made. In the papers
presented at the SIEF Conference as well as our fieldwork, the materiality of
houses has gradually emerged as the critical focal point on which to develop
an innovative multiscalar investigation into “being at home”, i.e. people’s
capacity to ensure their presence in the world – that is, in the sense of the
Heideggerian term to dwell – starting from their ability to build their own
refuge.
   To delve more deeply into this perspective, we must first clarify the use of
some terms. What are houses? And, moreover, what distinguishes them in
relation to homes and households? As Samanani and Lenhard have pointed
out, houses, homes and households have occupied a bizarre and “curious
position” within anthropology: an essential background “upon which many
of the most prominent theoretical questions of social science unfold”, but
also an element that has not always been properly discussed and
conceptualised. In other words, houses, homes and households have not
consistently been a “real” direct object of analysis (Samanani, Lenhard
2019). These three different words reveal the complexity surrounding an
ambiguous object of study. “Houses” must be viewed as the material form of
homes, regardless of the specific society we are addressing. “Household”
instead generally refers to a common social institution that is designated by
norms. Finally, “home” indicates the subjective perception of being
embedded and “present” in the world (Ibidem). In addition, the terminology
for this discussion should also include the actions of “homemaking” and
“dwelling” that are related to the heterogeneous ensemble of practices,
facts, values, imaginaries, discourses, moralities, and ideas that facilitate the
capacity to “be at home” (Alexander, Hojer Bruun, Koch 2018).
   Anthropologists focusing on houses, homes and households have pursued
many different analytical directions over the history of the discipline.
Indeed, these objects have inevitably been investigated according to the
different approaches (Cieraad 1999) stemming from the heterogeneous

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variety of interpretative paradigms characterising the development of
anthropology: to cite only a few examples, as objects replete in symbolic
meanings (Bourdieu 1977; Waterson 2009), as items of material culture
(Leroi-Ghouran 1977), as loci of the domestic domain and household
production (Leach 1954; Levi-Strauss 1979), as “perennial” institutional
systems (Levi-Strauss 1984; Godelier 2013), and as inter-active belongings in
specific environments (Ingold 2000) based on the capacity to grant sense and
form to lived experiences (Heidegger 1993) and needs (Malinowski 1944;
Sahlins 1972).
   Beyond such efforts of interpretation, houses have also played a central
role in the birth and consolidation of the ethnographic method. Most
ethnographic experiences began in or passed through a house: from
Morgan’s longhouse to Malinowski’s tent, from Mead’s Samoan fale to the
Dogon house where Griaule collected some of Ogotemmeli’s stories, from
Bourdieu’s “reverse” kabyle house to Miller’s bourgeois English home,
human shelters have not only played a fundamental role in the history of the
discipline but, in some cases, have also become symbols of anthropologists’
ability to develop an original and specific research method. Every
ethnographer can be said to be subject to the “law of hospitality” (Pitt-
Rivers 1977) whether literally or metaphorically, and must thus arrange to be
hosted in some house from which his or her research germinates (Herzfeld
1992; Fava 2017).
   The study of houses, homes and households was specifically developed as
part of scholarship in the anthropology of kinship, even though classic
studies by Radcliffe-Brown (1950), Evans-Pritchard (1940), or Fortes (1949)
did not recognize the house as the chosen place for the reproduction and the
perpetuation of kinship. In fact, until the mid-twentieth century kinship was
seen as the primary system responsible for providing a stable political
structure in stateless societies (Carsten 2003: 35). However, the way in which
anthropologists studied kinship also changed as part of the general
disciplinary shift of the 1970s and 1980s. Subsequently and thanks to the
influence of feminist scholarship (see Goldstein 2003), “the everyday
significance of what went on in houses – domestic labor, child-rearing, the
economy of the household – came increasingly under scrutiny” (Ibidem: 36).
Revisiting Lévi-Strauss’ insights into the principle of reciprocity, American
anthropologist Marshall Sahlins recently proposed that kinship be
considered “mutuality of being” (2014). According to this perspective, being
related thus means sharing a “common existence” and participating in being
culturally constructed in different ways. Although vague and not devoid of
problematic aspects (see Shapiro 2012), this formulation has breathed new


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THE ANATOMY OF HOUSES                                                            117


life into the debate on kinship and placed the dimension of sharing at the
centre of this subject. What then could be our starting point for observing
the central role of sharing in making kinship? Following Carsten, we can
start by focusing on houses. In her words, “kinship is made in houses
through the intimate sharing of space, food, and nurturance that goes on
within domestic space. And because being ‘made’ is usually opposed to being
‘given’, houses are good places to start examining that theme” (Carsten
2003: 35).

Société à maisons
   Given these premises, it is no coincidence that one of the most fruitful and
stimulating debates to have characterized the anthropology of the house in the
past (including the recent past) was fuelled by a structuralist anthropologist
who paid particular attention to issues of kinship: Claude Lévi-Strauss.
   As argued more fully elsewhere by one of the editors of this thematic
section (Pozzi 2021), in the first edition of La voie des masques (1975) Lévi-
Strauss briefly discussed Franz Boas’ problematic description of the kinship
system of the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw (at the time known as the Kwakiutl), a Native
American society based in northern Vancouver Island. Boas had encountered
difficulties in identifying their fundamental social unit and consequently in
choosing appropriate terminology: he first used the term gens to refer to the
“elementary cell” but then he corrected himself by instead using the term
clan; finally, he chose the native word numaym (numayma). This categorical
ambiguity spoke to the impossibility of clarifying the apparent instability
and coexistence of multiple types of lineage and marriage. Lévi-Strauss
decided to work towards resolving this ambiguity, leading him to formulate
the notion of société à maisons (Dominici 2019: 186-187).
   According to the structuralist anthropologist, the numayma should not be
considered an isolated case (as he himself had initially claimed, in
agreement with Boas) but rather one possible example of a very common
structure, the maison (house). In fact, Lévi-Strauss argued that this structure
could be found practically everywhere, in medieval Europe, among the
indigenous North American population the Yurok, and among the
Kwakwaka’wakw. In the words of the French anthropologist, the maison is
“[Une] personne morale détentrice d’un domaine composé à la fois de biens
matériels et immatériels, qui se perpétue par la transmission de son nom, de
sa fortune et de ses titres en ligne réelle ou fictive, tenue pour légitime à la
seule condition que cette continuuité puisse s’exprimer dans le langage de la
parenté ou de alliance, et, le plus souvent, des deux ensemble” (Lévi-Strauss
1983: 1224; 1979: 48).

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   This definition identifies the house as a corporate entity possessed of
composite properties of tangible and intangible assets such as “land, power,
and wealth” (Samanani, Lenhard 2019: 2). The maison is a social structure
that transcends individuals with the aim of ensuring its own perpetuation.
As a moral entity, it is able to replace “blood” as the sole defining element of
group identity. The rules of the kinship system are strategically subverted
and sacrificed – although not abandoned – in order to ensure the survival of
the house. Viewed in this way, the house thus represents a symbolic,
unconscious and operational social structure developed by the group, a
structure that is able to survive over time thanks to the transmission of the
deeds of ownership. In other words, the maison is responsible for the
structural stability of society (Hamberger 2010).
   This notion proved highly successful. It was adopted, in some cases
uncritically, by several anthropologists (see Macdonald 1987; Waterson
1988, 2009; Fox 1987, 1993). Towards the end of the twenty-first century,
however, two influential volumes contributed to a critical rethinking of the
concept, emphasizing the limits and potential of the maison notion (Haddad
2014). The first volume, published by Carsten and Hugh-Jones in 1995,
criticiqued the taxonomic intention behind the concept. About the House:
Lévi-Strauss and Beyond represented the first coherent attempt to
reformulate the concept of maison and critique its inherent structuralist
paradigm through an original approach based on ethnographic cases, mainly
in Latin America and Southeast Asia. The second volume, Beyond Kinship:
Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies, edited by Joyce and
Gillespie in 2000, took a more interdisciplinary approach to discussing the
theory. It proposed further developments in the use of the concept even
while maintaining a critique of the evolutionist and classifying spirit of the
original notion.
   Without going into too much detail, for the purposes of our argument
here it is sufficient to note that both Carsten and Hugh-Jones’s text and
Joyce and Gillespie’s highlight the surprising lack of interest in the material
dimension of the house. In Levi-Strauss’ meaning, in fact, the maison was
treated as a container to be filled. Instead, as comprehensively demonstrated
by both volumes, the concreteness of houses must be taken into consideration
as an emblematic dimension in which normative and material forms are
mediated, reproduced, and even contested and negotiated (Carsten, Hugh-
Jones 1995; see Miller 2005).



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THE ANATOMY OF HOUSES                                                            119


Materialities
   Given this general configuration, our aim is to promote an interpretative
approach that reflects on socio-cultural dynamics starting from the
materiality of houses in order to partially resolve the lack of interest in the
materiality of houses that characterized the discipline up to a few years ago.
The study of the houses, homes and households from the perspective of
material culture is not new to anthropology. As suggested by Miller (2001: 4)
who theorized materiality by approaching mere things as artifacts, thereby
transcending the dualistic distinction between subjects and objects, “the
emphasis was on the home as a representation of normative order through
symbolic contrast. […] Other approaches at that time emphasized the home
as a stable foundation or anchor to kinship and domestic life”. While this
thematic section certainly does employ a processual notion of house
encompassing imaginaries, memories and feelings, it also places the
concreteness of houses back at the centre of the analysis where normative
and material forms are mediated, reproduced, and even contested or
negotiated, as some feminist writings on domestic dimensions specifically
remind us (Abu-Lughod 1986). In other words, “The Anatomy of Houses”
seeks to make an original contribution to anthropological discussion by
focusing on materiality as a basic and “driving force” propelled by
humanity’s attempts to modify the world and deal with its transformations
so as to bring it into “accord with beliefs as to how the world should be”
(Miller 2005: 6).
   According to Buchli (2013: 7), author of Anthropology of Architecture, three
thinkers are key to the discussion of built form and its materiality. The first
is Alfred Gell, who contributed to the debate with his work on the Maori
meeting house “as a distributed object and distributed mind” (1998); the
second is Claude Lévi-Strauss with his reflection on house societies (1987);
and the third is Pierre Bourdieu with his work on Kabyle houses and the
notion of habitus (1977; 1990). In addition, we would also cite Daniel
Miller’s work on material culture and home possession (2001; 2005) and Tim
Ingold’s reflections (2007) on materiality in architectural forms as well as his
focus on the semiotic and mental aspects of form and the inherently
relational quality of materials.
   From the point of view of urban anthropology, represented in this case by
Jaffe and de Koning’s (2016: 28-32) introductory volume, two aspects have
received particular attention in analyses of houses and their materiality
specifically: architecture and domestic space. On the one hand, architectural
structures have been analysed mainly in terms of their relational and power


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dimensions, influenced by both official goals and everyday practices (Cfr.
Buchli 2013). On the other hand, studies on domestic spaces have focused
primarily on the organization, decoration and use of houses (Dei 2011;
Douglas 1991; Meloni 2011; Miller 2010). Nevertheless, anthropologists also
study much more through the lens of houses: material techniques, economic
and political structures, cosmologies, group dynamics, kinship, rituals,
gender relationships, and so on. Houses could thus be seen as representing
the intimate and dense core of every society – a “petrified time” (Roche
2000: 83) – and, at the same time, probably one of the few universal aspects
of every cultural configuration (Appadurai 2000). As stated by Miller, “if
home is where the heart is, then it is also where it is broken, torn and made
whole in the flux of relationships, social and material” (Miller 2001: 15).
   Building on these insights, we thus suggest considering houses as sites of
experience and meaning-making: their design reflects ideal social relations,
but their use transforms and negotiates such relations, making them “real”
places. Houses can represent (temporary or permanent) “fixed points” in the
biographies of our research participants (Pozzi 2020a; 2020b); they may
constitute “dots” or markers in an increasingly liquid, inconstant, and flexible
social reality. Indeed, although we recognize that houses are not immobile
objects, we suggest that they can nonetheless mean stability, permanence,
and protection, including in the imaginative form of an ideal goal,
investment, or desire (Grassi 2019). Moreover, houses do not stand in
opposition to the current moment’s characteristic “-scapes”, transnationalisms,
or mobilities (Appadurai 2013). Rather, as most of the papers in this Special
Issue ethnographically show, houses are complementary to these concerns.
They are a sediment of these processes or a “break” in them. The “social
construction of houses” is therefore affected by contemporary dynamics
connected to uncertainty and movement. For all of these reasons, houses are
privileged standpoints for uncovering the ways in which contemporary
transformations are materialized, embodied and felt (Augé et al. 2016).
   In general, the history of anthropology tells us that houses are complex
products of societal transformations; at the same time, however, they can
also be active loci that promote change. These dialectical elements invite us
to consider houses as a necessary part of a broader process. There are many
factors driving the theoretical necessity of considering different ways of
“being at home”: transnational migrations, economic crises, logics of
exclusion, wild urbanization, and touristification as well as the
contemporary pandemic experience are some of the phenomena that are
changing the experience of dwelling. If we take up Carsten’s call to “listen to
them”, therefore, houses speak about identities but also political, economic,


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THE ANATOMY OF HOUSES                                                           121


and ideological processes. They constitute a point of connection among and
a concrete result of these elements. They can uncover – to quote Tonkiss –
both “the politics and practice of small incursions in material spaces, the
possibilities these open up, and the forms of sociality they might entail”
(Tonkiss 2013: 315).

The contributions: A multilevel analysis of the house
   This thematic section presents three articles that ethnographically
explore – at a global level – how houses and their materiality modify the
world and deal with its transformations. The articles cover a very broad
geographical spectrum, addressing three countries (Laos, Bolivia, and
Tunisia) on three different continents. The research was conducted at
different times, between 2012 and 2020, before the Covid 19 pandemic
exploded. All the essays show the centrality of the house and its material
dimension in the construction of individual subjectivity and community
bonds, beginning from an awareness that the house, in the three different
contexts investigated, represents “a foundational unity of community” as
stated by Alderman in relation to Bolivia. However, the articles formulate
this approach in specifically original ways: Stolz’s article mainly underlines
the phenomenological dimension, Alderman’s the symbolic and ritual
aspect, and Pontiggia’s the historical and materialist level.
   Rosalie Stolz explores the relationship between materiality and houses
through the concept of soundscape. In the uplands of northern Laos where
bamboo and timber houses once prevailed, concrete houses are now on the
rise. Drawing on experiences (including her own) of staying in both types of
houses over the course of long-term ethnographic fieldwork among the
Khmu, Stolz analyses the experiential difference of living surrounded by
different materials from her and local inhabitants’ points of view. Her
discussion shows that Khmu houses are a social entity that simultaneously
embrace and unite their residents and the household group, connecting
them with other houses, ancestors, and house spirits. Focusing on this
cultural and social dimension, Stolz’s paper inspired by the phenomeno-
logical approaches to sociality in and across houses developed by Christine
Helliwell (1996; 2006) and Catherine Allerton (2013) describes a materiality
in the making – represented by the acoustic and relational dimensions of
these new concrete houses – that is reflected in certain social changes. The
article highlights “the implications” of changing housing materials, building
on Elinoff (2016) to explore the implementation of “[…] new modes of
political and moral being and belonging that remake, but do not completely
disassemble, existing hierarchies of power” (Elinoff 2016: 612f.).


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   Jonathan Alderman presents the insights of lengthy ethnographic field-
work with the Kallawayas, Bolivian shamanic-healers, aimed at under-
standing how – specifically from a cosmological and ritual perspective –
people’s relationships with houses might change as a result of changes in
their materiality. Alderman describes the way houses in the rural Bolivian
Andes represent, mainly through their materiality, a significant mediator in
relations between humans and nonhumans. The article examines how the
house, known in Quechua-speaking communities as wasi, is constituted as a
person in its own right and how rituals around the house connect its
inhabitants to sacred places through the house. The case study thus provides
a fertile opportunity for ethnographically examining the making of “the
social organisation around the environs of the house” and how these “social
relations are constituted through ritual and the material nature of the house
itself”. Thanks to the materials used in their construction, houses in the
rural Bolivian Andes become “a personified representation of the mountain”.
Indeed, the mountain provides various materials the local community uses
to shape their houses and homes: “mud for the walls, kindling for the fire,
shrubs used in mixing building materials, wood for the roof, and grass for the
roof-covering”. In conclusion, the paper examines the role of the house as a
nonhuman being in itself and as a conduit between its inhabitants and local
place deities; furthermore, the house in this article also becomes a metonymy
for or – in the words of the author – a “fractal representation” of the wider
social structure.
   Stefano Pontiggia describes and analyses precarious dwellings in the
mining town of Redeyef, Tunisia. Describing three different houses, Pontiggia
sheds lights on the extent to which a socioeconomic context generated by a
long history of deprivation affects peoples’ lives and relationships to homes.
In this setting, the materiality of houses refers to historical processes and
social expectations in a space of political and economic marginality.
Pontiggia bases his analysis on two key concepts: “home-spectations” and
“houses-to-be”. The first refers to “the expectations of success and social
integration that locals, especially young men, place on home ownership”;
the second one represents an innovative and original “ethnographic object”
that may prove useful in adopting Carsten’s (2018) suggestion of treating
houses as biographical objects capable of shedding light on “the multiple
entanglements that houses illuminate between the lives and relations that
are enacted within them and the historically-inflected social and political
contexts in which they are situated” (Carsten 2018: 114).



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THE ANATOMY OF HOUSES                                                           123


   In the final paper, an invited discussant, Irene Cieraad, senior researcher
in the Department of Architecture, Delft University of Technology (the
Netherlands) and author of the fundamental book At Home: An Anthropology
of Domestic Space (1999), reflects on the thematic section, dialoguing with
the main issues raised by the three author’s proposals and arguments.
   Taken together, the introduction and four contributions cast an
innovative gaze on a branch of anthropology that has pursued multiple
analytical directions over the history of the discipline, focusing on the
material aspects of dwellings or, more precisely, taking those aspects as a
fascinating starting point to then move beyond them. Given that
contemporary societies expand by destroying ecosystems, returning to
domestic space means rethinking our way of existing and, therefore, of
inhabiting the entire planet. As Stolz states in this thematic section, in
agreement with other authors such as Carsten (1997; 2018), Carsten and
Hugh Jones (1995), Howell (2003), Janowski (1995), Sparkes and Howell
(2003), and Waterson (2009), “[…] houses are more than mere physical
shelter”. Paradoxically, we can most effectively understand this point by
beginning from an in-depth, thick analysis of their materiality.
   To conclude, we would like to take on the words of Daniel Miller when he
argues that “the life of anthropology comes from its insistence on seeing the
world through perspectives we would never have even imagined if we had
not forced ourselves into the site from which other people view their worlds.
For this reason, material culture studies that focus on the fine-grained
developments in material and social relations of the home become once
again the vanguard for contemporary anthropology” (Miller 2001: 15-16).
Without any pretence of seeking to represent the avant-garde of
contemporary anthropology with this thematic section, these words invite us
to grasp the centrality that this theme has represented for the discipline, not
so much for its conservation and survival as to promote changes and
transformations within it. Understood in this sense, the house is always a
starting point.




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124                                                          GIACOMO POZZI, PAOLO GRASSI



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 Paolo GRASSI is a post-doc fellow at the Polytechnic University of Milan, adjunct
 professor in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Padua, and local
 researcher for the European “TRANSGANG” project (Università di Milano Bicocca
 and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona). He has carried out ethnographic
 research in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Italy, pursuing interests in
 issues relating to urban segregation, violence and insecurity. He has published
 books and articles in national and international journals. He is a member of the
 action research group Mapping San Siro based at the Polytechnic of Milan. Among
 his publications: Il limbo urbano: conflitti territoriali, violenza e gang a Città del
 Guatemala (Ombrecorte, 2015).
 paolo.grassi@polimi.it

 Giacomo POZZI is a fixed-term research assistant at IULM University in Milan. He
 has carried out ethnographic research in Portugal, Italy, and Cape Verde. His main
 interests are housing vulnerability, urban marginality, welfare politics and
 practices of hospitality. He is the author of several articles published in national
 and international journals and the book Fuori Casa. Antropologia degli sfratti a
 Milano (Ledizioni, 2020). He is a member of the editorial staff of the journal
 Antropologia and co-director of Territori (a book series Editpress).
 giacomo.pozzi@iulm.it




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giacomo Pozzi, Paolo Grassi
The anatomy of houses: Materialities of being at home
2021 | ANUAC. VOL. 10, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2021: 111-128.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3869
