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Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at hunting events in the Alentejo, Southern Portugal, and interprets emic views of a dialectics of self-interest and mutuality with regard to ideas of social value, to an emergent spatiality and the social construction of places.

Paper long abstract:

The paper takes issue with the moral opposition between 'selfishness' (egoísmo) and 'care' (querer saber) as I have learned it from my informants during fieldwork in Aldeia de Cima, in Southern Portugal. In my informants' view, 'selfishness' and 'care' are attributes of contrasting forms of social conduct, directed respectively towards self-interest and to other people. They pertain to two types of 'growth', epitomised respectively in the wealth of the largest, non-local, landowners (os grandes/'the grand-folk') and the social connections of villagers (os pequenos/'the little folk'). In spite of its self-demeaning appearance, it is the second sort of conduct that is thought to be at the source of social value. This is expressed through an idiom that relies heavily on kinship imagery.

'Selfishness' and 'care' are ideas mobilised in the course of social conflict around changes in land-use, which are perceived locally in terms of an increasing 'closedness', so to speak, of the spatial environment around the village. The paper attends to the spatiality produced by a particular sort of events - hunting events - in which 'the little folk' and 'the grand folk' meet on the land. It accounts for its relationship with emic views of a dialectics of self-interest and mutuality. Finally, it argues that these views play a role in local ideas of social value and the social construction of places.