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Accepted Paper:

has pdf download Ownership, Appropriation and the Reproduction Cycle of Afro-descendent Houses in Salvador, Bahia  
Maria Gabriela Hita (Federal University of Bahia)

Paper short abstract:

Reproduction of extended family organization amongst poor Bahians is examined through transformations of a house. New houses emerge from a matriarchal nucleus, through donation, inheritance, appropriation or exclusion of kin, yet change replicates the logic of matriarchal family organization.

Paper long abstract:

The house in the physical sense is a scarce resource in Brazil, yet the locus of identities and belonging for those who inhabit it. In the context of the poverty and precarious urban development of slums in Salvador, a city with eighty percent Afrodescendent population, I analyse the mode of reproduction of a matriarchal type of extended family common among poor Bahians. The analysis of the transformations of the houses - in both the physical and symbolic senses - of such families captures processes that are central to inter-family relations, the life course of family members, and the emergence of new identities. I examine a case in which four new semi-independent households emerged from an original matriarchal nucleus in the original geographical space, either through donation of space while the matriarch was alive, inheritance after her death, non-consensual appropriation of part of the terrain, or exclusion of members of this kin group from their rights in the house. These transformations reveal the dynamics of group relations in terms of conflicts, alliances, belonging and identities, which are repeatedly renegotiated, stigmatizing some members of the family and empowering others. The analysis aims to show that far from breaking the logic of matriarchal family organization, these processes lead to its reproduction in a new life cycle in which new households replicate the original by incorporating grandchildren and the partners of the matriarch's children in new houses that remain connected to the master network of kinship and affinity of which they are part.

Panel P47
Housing relations
  Session 1