New materials, different spatialities, same houses? Approaches to pastoralist communities and modern state relationships from the study of domestic architectures and techniques in the Andean highlands (Jujuy, Argentina)

BARADA, JULIETA; TOMASI, JORGE

Heidelberg

Workshop; The Modern House: Anthropological Perspectives on the Transformation of Vernacular Houses; 2021

Universidad de Heidelberg

The interest for the transformation of the ways of life and domestic spaces of pastoralist communities has been explicit or implicit in much of the policies deployed by the modern state in different places. The vernacular architectures from the communities of Jujuy highlands, built with different earthen construction techniques, have historically been associated with shepherds’ mobility. The institutional deployment of the state and capitalist labor markets in the area contributed to the development of small and medium towns, with significant impact in different fields of social life from communities and particularly in the way of living, building practices and spaces. The ethnographic work sustained by the authors in the area allowed us to recognize two lines of enquiry. The first one, refers to architecture modes of production, materials and techniques. In recent decades the abandonment of certain techniques, such as adobe, has been encouraged to incorporate other materials and procedures, based mostly on the use of cement. These changes are linked to new social relationships around construction, other temporalities, and different spatialities in architectures. The second one, refers to spatial conformations, its uses and senses, from the analysis of native categories from which domestic architecture is understood and classified. By the name of casas [homes], departamentos [apartments] or viviendas [houses], local population defines -and at the same time distinguishes- different current domestic architectures developed in local towns. Each of these concepts refers to a specific configuration of spaces and to a set of practices and senses that are produced there, to a technical resolution, to the use of certain materials and it also refers to their production conditions.  The study carried out will seek to shed light on the way in which both spatialities and materialities are far from being constituted as exclusionary alternatives or radical change resulting from an imposition. It is worth asking about the representations linked to the use of these new materials, within displacements in social trajectories. Finally, the articulation between these different architectures and their dynamics, constitute new alternatives on shepherds mobility, defining other ways that are often invisible to the state that can be considered itself, as resistance strategies.