Houses: quantified, projected and lived
Abstract
In this paper I analyse the construction of favelas in Rio de Janeiro as both a problem and an object of intervention – a government issue – through the dynamics implicated in diverse conceptions of house, residence and domicile: discrete and homogenous objects of government statistics and programs, on one hand; simultaneously physical and symbolic processes experienced by people in the favelas, on the other. My starting point will be the core categories found in intervention plans (such as the National Social Housing System) and in national statistics (especially the Census). The category ‘social housing’ informs the current policy of building ‘decent housing’ for the country’s poor population. The term will be discussed alongside other statistical categories like ‘subnormal agglomerate’ – used to classify favelas – ‘domicile’ and ‘family budget’ – which seek to define units connecting housing and family, and quantify the administration of people’s income. These categories will be analysed via an ethnographic approach, which entails an inquiry into the people responsible for producing the categories and the spaces in which they are circulated and interpreted.
The idea of the ‘measurable house’ will be examined in light of its relation to other conceptions of house found among residents of the Complexo do Alemão, a cluster of favelas in Rio’s North Zone, where I have been carrying out fieldwork over the last three years. The house is a central element in the social dynamics of this community and affords us an understanding of how economic practices, family relations and the transformation of physical spaces are integrated and mutually constitutive processes in a constant dialogue with public policies – feeding on them, resisting them and intersecting with them. My interest here resides in developing an ethnographic comprehension of how the measurable house and the lived house are produced as elements in each other’s construction, through an analysis of the complex dynamics in which numbers and maps are produced and government housing developments are negotiated. The connections between built spaces, family ties and the economy lie at the core of the relations between the different conceptions deployed in these interventions.
Bio
Eugênia Motta is a researcher at the Center for Research on Culture and Economy (NuCEC) responsible for coordinating a collective research project in the Complexo do Alemão, a group of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. She has a post-doctorate fellowship from FAPERJ (Foundation for Research Support of Rio de Janeiro) based on the National Museum’s Graduate Program in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). Her current research project in the Complexo do Alemão has two main strands. The first concerns the ordinary economic practices in the favela and their connections to family practices, gender issues, and both imagined and physical constructed spaces. The second reflects on recent public interventions (urbanization projects and so-called ‘pacification’) seen in terms of their resonances in the daily life of inhabitants.
[email protected]
[webpage]
In this paper I analyse the construction of favelas in Rio de Janeiro as both a problem and an object of intervention – a government issue – through the dynamics implicated in diverse conceptions of house, residence and domicile: discrete and homogenous objects of government statistics and programs, on one hand; simultaneously physical and symbolic processes experienced by people in the favelas, on the other. My starting point will be the core categories found in intervention plans (such as the National Social Housing System) and in national statistics (especially the Census). The category ‘social housing’ informs the current policy of building ‘decent housing’ for the country’s poor population. The term will be discussed alongside other statistical categories like ‘subnormal agglomerate’ – used to classify favelas – ‘domicile’ and ‘family budget’ – which seek to define units connecting housing and family, and quantify the administration of people’s income. These categories will be analysed via an ethnographic approach, which entails an inquiry into the people responsible for producing the categories and the spaces in which they are circulated and interpreted.
The idea of the ‘measurable house’ will be examined in light of its relation to other conceptions of house found among residents of the Complexo do Alemão, a cluster of favelas in Rio’s North Zone, where I have been carrying out fieldwork over the last three years. The house is a central element in the social dynamics of this community and affords us an understanding of how economic practices, family relations and the transformation of physical spaces are integrated and mutually constitutive processes in a constant dialogue with public policies – feeding on them, resisting them and intersecting with them. My interest here resides in developing an ethnographic comprehension of how the measurable house and the lived house are produced as elements in each other’s construction, through an analysis of the complex dynamics in which numbers and maps are produced and government housing developments are negotiated. The connections between built spaces, family ties and the economy lie at the core of the relations between the different conceptions deployed in these interventions.
Bio
Eugênia Motta is a researcher at the Center for Research on Culture and Economy (NuCEC) responsible for coordinating a collective research project in the Complexo do Alemão, a group of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. She has a post-doctorate fellowship from FAPERJ (Foundation for Research Support of Rio de Janeiro) based on the National Museum’s Graduate Program in Social Anthropology (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). Her current research project in the Complexo do Alemão has two main strands. The first concerns the ordinary economic practices in the favela and their connections to family practices, gender issues, and both imagined and physical constructed spaces. The second reflects on recent public interventions (urbanization projects and so-called ‘pacification’) seen in terms of their resonances in the daily life of inhabitants.
[email protected]
[webpage]