Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnography in a Romanian village, this paper analyses the dual epistemic nature of households. I propose a mechanism explaining both the material culture of opacity and secrecy in everyday life and their conspicuously overt "good room" in the rituals of death.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses a puzzling feature of households in the Romanian village of Sateni. In everyday life, the domestic sphere is closely guarded against external interference, be it physical intrusion or inquisitive attention from people outside the family, relatives or friends. The epistemic protection involves doors, windows, gates, fences and house architecture designed to keep malevolent agency at bay. However, the occurrence of death turns topsy turvy the cultural structure of domestic protection. Doors open widely towards the exterior, mortuary symbols draw and everyone can come into the sacred part of the house - "the good room"- where the corpse lies in state for the three days of the wake. What explains this total reversal of attention and secrecy?

I will argue that the inside of the house plays a culturally-central communicative role. the interior life of a household contains the most moral social relationships of an individual and the security of the private sphere defines a family's social competence in protecting its members and their earthly possessions. As Bloch and Parry (1982) have argued, death raises a problem for the persistence of a social order. In Sateni, the conspicuous disclosure of inner material spaces confronts biological extinction with a ritualised enactment of domestic solidarity, of a reproduction of households and families despite individual disappearance. The visibility of death does not question the opacity of life, but offers a closely-monitored legitimation of fundamental moral principles of internal reciprocity and external autarchy in Sateni village society.