Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how aspirations are mediated and, in turn, to what extent mediating concepts shape social forms. I argue that in São Jorge the notion of casa, denoting both material building and normative idea, organizes the desire for recognition while restraining certain aspirants’ prospects.

Paper long abstract:

As this panel states, people around the world aspire to certain ideals or things – and often they fail to realize these aspirations. Yet, by what means do people aspire? How are specific ways of reaching for something shaped by the actual thing people aspire?

In this paper I explore difficult-to-realise aspirations through the analytic of the house (casa) in São Jorge Island, Portugal. Drastic depopulation has led to a surplus of abandoned houses, while the recently emerging tourism industry skyrocketed the price of any dwelling, from ruined stable to inhabited house. This situation creates financial opportunities for some people but not others; it thereby makes houses the lynchpin of potential wealth and social mistrust. At the same time, the concept casa not only refers to an asset but is understood as a normative category organizing belonging and moral status. Put bluntly, if somebody does not own a house, or worse, does not belong to a proper household (also casa), there is a high chance of being socially marginalized.

Tracing the hopeful aspirations and recurrent failures of my interlocutors, I argue that casa is a pivotal medium to understand the striving for a specific form of individual personhood. The local experience of nonachievement is crucially shaped by frustrations and hopes bound up with houses. Put differently, while many of my interlocutors intensely aspire material houses, the moral category of casa accommodates and restrains the ability to reasonably aspire in general.