Paper short abstract:

Ideas about the house as a "stable", "controlled" or "quiet" place are here considered by the consideration of how these houses are always related and compared to less "enduring" or "familiar" spaces: camps, single rooms for rent, construction sites, prison cells, barracks and huts.

Paper long abstract:

My starting point in this paper is what my interlocutors have been describing as the "estabilization" of Minaçu (small city located in the North of the Brazilian state of Goiás): once considered an unstable and turbulent town, as its history has always been associated to transitory economic activities such as gold mining and the construction of dams, now it is becoming, in the words of those who have remained living there, a more "familiar" and "quieter" place. These changes are clearly expressed in the recent construction boom in the city, and by the way public works and domestic improvements are both oriented by the necessity to signal a disposition to invest and stay in the city. This context offers a privileged perspective to investigate native ideas about "stability", "control" and "peace", especially because the production of these states require settling in, building and/or reforming a house. What is at stake here is the counterpoint of these "proper" houses to the quite relevant experiences of these persons in less enduring or solid living places: small scale mining camps; single rooms for rent; accommodations in farms, mining company areas or construction sites; barracks and huts of all kinds. Following the stories that connect these different spaces I intend to show how "the question of the house" cannot be separated from the issue of mobility; and how this inseparability shape certain economic practices and moralities and orient my interlocutors' relationship with large companies and the agencies of the State.

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