Oikonomia. Governing the House in Land Reform Settlements in Brazil
Abstract
In this paper, I want to explore the notion of oikonomia, which I translate as ‘domestic government’, as a tool to understand the centrality of the house as both an object of State policies and a center of everyday living practices and affects. Aristotle is usually credited as being the first to formulate a notion of « domestic economy », under the label of oikonomia. However, a close reading of his writings, brings out the centrality of the concern with « government » in a Foucauldian sense, involving both government of the self, and government of the Other.
Drawing on this insight, and on a long-term ethnography, I look at the ways the house, has become the main focus of tension between the government by the State agencies and beneficiaries’ practices in three land reform settlement projects (assentamentos) in the Northeast region of Brazil. Most beneficiaries had formerly been resident workers, known as dwellers (moradores) in sugarcane plantations ; the house was therefore an essential element of the traditional system of personal domination by plantation masters. As the Land Reform State project gives a central role to production concerns, State agents are prone to « govern the house » using economic tools. Brazilian government agencies set up projects of "housing units" in assentamentos in order to provide shelter for the labour force in charge of exploiting the land under the regime of « family agriculture ».
By contrast, for project beneficiaries, a 'casa' refers to a material and moral construct, whose physical and moral boundaries shift across time and changes in family configurations. Concerns for "sustaining the house", as a means to insure life and good life are linked to the double striving for autonomy and protection, and imbued with the claim for the recognition of one's moral worth. Ethnography offers a way to reconceptualise as oikonomia or "domestic government" what has usually been conceived of as "domestic economy", highlighting the political and moral aspects of everyday domestic practices that are crucial for our interlocutors in the field.
Bio
Benoît de L'Estoile is an anthropologist, Research Professor (directeur de recherche) at the CNRS, IRIS, Paris, and teaches at the Ecole normale supérieure and EHESS. He is doing fieldwork in rural Pernambuco. He has published Empires, Nations and Natives. Anthropology and State-making, Duke University Press, 2005, (with Federico Neiburg and Lygia Sigaud), Le goût des autres. De l’exposition coloniale aux arts premiers, 2007 and edited Colonial legacies : the past in the present, Social Anthropology/ Anthropologie Sociale, (2008). He has recently published « “Money is good, but a friend is better“. Uncertainty, orientation to the future and ‘the economy’ », Current Anthropology (2014. He is co-ordinating with Federico Neiburg the international research program « Forms of government and daily economic practices » http://ecogov.weebly.com/ .
[email protected]
In this paper, I want to explore the notion of oikonomia, which I translate as ‘domestic government’, as a tool to understand the centrality of the house as both an object of State policies and a center of everyday living practices and affects. Aristotle is usually credited as being the first to formulate a notion of « domestic economy », under the label of oikonomia. However, a close reading of his writings, brings out the centrality of the concern with « government » in a Foucauldian sense, involving both government of the self, and government of the Other.
Drawing on this insight, and on a long-term ethnography, I look at the ways the house, has become the main focus of tension between the government by the State agencies and beneficiaries’ practices in three land reform settlement projects (assentamentos) in the Northeast region of Brazil. Most beneficiaries had formerly been resident workers, known as dwellers (moradores) in sugarcane plantations ; the house was therefore an essential element of the traditional system of personal domination by plantation masters. As the Land Reform State project gives a central role to production concerns, State agents are prone to « govern the house » using economic tools. Brazilian government agencies set up projects of "housing units" in assentamentos in order to provide shelter for the labour force in charge of exploiting the land under the regime of « family agriculture ».
By contrast, for project beneficiaries, a 'casa' refers to a material and moral construct, whose physical and moral boundaries shift across time and changes in family configurations. Concerns for "sustaining the house", as a means to insure life and good life are linked to the double striving for autonomy and protection, and imbued with the claim for the recognition of one's moral worth. Ethnography offers a way to reconceptualise as oikonomia or "domestic government" what has usually been conceived of as "domestic economy", highlighting the political and moral aspects of everyday domestic practices that are crucial for our interlocutors in the field.
Bio
Benoît de L'Estoile is an anthropologist, Research Professor (directeur de recherche) at the CNRS, IRIS, Paris, and teaches at the Ecole normale supérieure and EHESS. He is doing fieldwork in rural Pernambuco. He has published Empires, Nations and Natives. Anthropology and State-making, Duke University Press, 2005, (with Federico Neiburg and Lygia Sigaud), Le goût des autres. De l’exposition coloniale aux arts premiers, 2007 and edited Colonial legacies : the past in the present, Social Anthropology/ Anthropologie Sociale, (2008). He has recently published « “Money is good, but a friend is better“. Uncertainty, orientation to the future and ‘the economy’ », Current Anthropology (2014. He is co-ordinating with Federico Neiburg the international research program « Forms of government and daily economic practices » http://ecogov.weebly.com/ .
[email protected]