BUILDING AND STABILIZING CITIES, HOUSES AND PEOPLE

Abstract

Inspired by the so-called new anthropology of the house and its promise of a heuristic yield to the unitary analyses of the houses and the people who inhabit them, this article suggests that a third element may be considered within this same analytical framework: cities. Inspired by certain native ideas of the inhabitants of Minaçu, a small town in the interior of the Brazilian state of Goiás, I show that houses, persons and cities mix and transform together, as entities possessing the same qualities, as products of the same processes. I focus here on these quite recent transformations that suggest that this city is no longer an unstable and dangerous frontier-like land of adventurers and outsiders; it is, on the other hand, becoming capable of achieving some kind of order and progress by “stabilizing itself”.

Key words:
Houses; Personhood; Construction; Urban economy