Paper short abstract:

Exploring the effects of socialist housing policies on experiences of domesticity in post-Soviet Cuba, this paper shows how, in conjuction with witchcraft, such policies turn homes ‘inside out,’ rendering qualities associated with a public “exterior” integral to experiences of domestic “interiors”.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on socialist principles of property distribution and Soviet-inspired social housing programmes, since the 1970s policies to meliorate urban housing shortages have been prominently incorporated into the ongoing project of the Cuban Revolution. Focusing on personal relationships within the home, this paper explores the effects of these state-sponored housing arrangements on everyday domesticity in contemporary, post-Soviet Havana. The paper argues that novel domestic formations that have emerged in Cuban cities are conditioned by the state's attempts to implement a vision of the "revolutionary home" that effectively turns the home, as it were, inside out. In contrast to the "bourgeois" representation of homes as spaces of retreat from the public sphere, or of familial trust and domestic intimacy, in Cuba socialism combines with distinct cultural and economic factors so that many Cubans experience the home as a deeply ambivalent space, often saturated with tension and suspicion. Rather than being a space of familial trust, the home is often a space of mistrust or paranoia, frequently expressed in potent local idioms and practices associated with witchcraft. Socialism and witchcraft intersect in the home, rendering it a site of state and community penetration, so that qualities normally associated with a public "exterior" become integral to the experience of domestic "interiors".