Oikography: Ethnographies of House-ing in Critical Times

Houses are at once built shelters; collections of relations, affects, and moralities; and nodes within neighborhoods, communities, and larger political-economic and environmental regimes. This Colloquy proposes oikography as an ethnographic approach that deconstructs technocratic assumptions about the house and traces the plasticity of dwelling across multiple space-times, with a focus on the action of house-ing. Inspired by critical perspectives emanating from the diasporic, post-plantation house, we explore the reciprocal process of people making houses and houses making people amid ongoing calamity. The processes of house-ing reveal houses as unpredictable human-nonhuman entities, modulated by tensions between stability and instability, borders and fluxes, stillness and movement. Oikography is thus attuned to multirelational efforts at creating provisional dwellings, grounds from which the past is gauged and future horizons crafted. Resumo As casas são ao mesmo tempo abrigos construídos, coleções de relações, afetos e moralidades, e nodos dentro de bairros, comunidades e regimes político-econômicos e ambientais. Esta coletânea propõe a oikografia como uma abordagem etnográfica que desmonta pressupostos tecnocráticos sobre a casa e traça a plasticidade da moradia através de múltiplos espaços e temporalidades, com foco nas ações de house-ing. Inspirados por perspectivas críticas que emanam do viver diaspórico e pós-plantação, exploramos o processo recíproco de pessoas fazendo casas e casas fazendo pessoas em meio a calamidades recorrentes. Os processos de house-ing mostram as casas como entidades humano-não humanas imprevisíveis, moduladas por tensões entre estabilidade e instabilidade, limites e fluxos, repouso e movimento. A oikografia está assim em sintonia com os esforços multi-relacionais de criação de vivendas provisórias, bases a partir das quais o passado é aferido e horizontes futuros são traçados. Resumen Las casas son a la vez refugios construidos, complejos de relaciones, afectos y moralidades, nodos dentro de barrios, comunidades, regímenes político-económicos y medioambientales. Este dossier propone a la oikografía como un enfoque etnográfico que deconstruye los supuestos tecnocráticos sobre la casa y rastrea su plasticidad a través de tiempos y espacios, focalizando las acciones de house-ing. Inspirados en las perspectivas críticas que emanan del vivir diaspórico y de la post-plantación, exploramos el proceso recíproco de personas que hacen casas y de casas que hacen personas en medio a las calamidades del mundo contemporáneo. Los procesos de house-ing muestran a las casas como entidades humanas-no humanas impredecibles, moduladas por tensiones entre estabilidad e inestabilidad, fronteras y flujos, quietud y movimiento. La oikografía está, por lo tanto, en sintonía con los esfuerzos multirrelacionales para crear hogares provisorios, terrenos desde los que se observa el pasado y se elaboran horizontes de futuro.

Multiscale Home: Shifting Landscapes and Living-in-Movement in Haiti

In January 2010, a catastrophic earthquake ravaged Haiti. In areas such as Port-au-Prince, the tragedy was compounded by an ensuing cholera outbreak. Here, conditions of prolonged crisis illuminate people’s resilient house-ing responses at the intersection of two dynamics: the vital relational character of Haitian houses and the necessity of mobility for producing new life. Rooted in the Haitian post-plantation world, the house (kay) does not constitute a bounded space but is rather realized conceptually and materially at diverse scales: people belong to many interdependent houses and houses belong to many interrelated people, sutured across space and time and between the living and the dead. In the wake of the 2010 disaster, and now amid the COVID-19 pandemic, new challenges and opportunities have arisen for diasporic families as they craft ways to enact and secure multiscale forms of livelihood. Rezime Nan mwa janvye ane 2010, yon tranbleman tè vyolan te frape Ayiti. Nan kèlke zòn tankou Pòtoprens, kapital la, trajedi a te vin agrave akòz yon epidemi kolera. Kriz pwolonje sa a montre detèminasyon moun yo nan yon entèseksyon ki gen ladan l de dinamik: 1) youn ki montre karaktè relasyonèl ak vital kay ayisien yo; 2) lòt la ki konsantre l sou mouvman pou bay lavi a sans. Kay, ki gen rasin li nan mond apre peryòd plantasyon an, li pa sèlman yon espas ki separe ak yon fwontyè fizik, men konseptyèlman e materyèlman nan plizyè echèl: moun yo fè pati plizyè kay entèdepandan, epi tou kay yo apateni ak plizyè moun ki entèrelasyone, gras a lyen ke yo genyen ki limite nan espas ak nan tan, ant moun vivan yo ak sila ki mouri yo. Nan dezas 2010 la ak nan moman pandemi Kovid-19 la, fanmi yo gen nouvo defi ak opòtinite pandan y ap kreye nouvo mwayen nan plizyè dimansyon pou lavi ka kontinie. Resumen En enero de 2010 un violento terremoto devastó Haití. En zonas como la capital, Port-au-Prince, la tragedia se vio agravada por una epidemia de cólera. La crisis prolongada ilumina la resiliencia de las personas en la intersección de dos dinámicas: una, que señala el carácter relacional y vital de los hogares haitianos y, otra, que tematiza la movilidad para producir vida. Enraizada en el mundo de la post-plantación, la casa (kay) no es sólo un espacio delimitado por fronteras físicas, sino que se realiza conceptual y materialmente en escalas múltiples: las personas pertenecen a varias casas interdependientes y las casas pertenecen a varias personas interrelacionadas, en vínculos suturados a través del espacio y del tiempo, entre los vivos y los muertos. Entre la catástrofe de 2010 y la pandemia de Covid-19 surgen nuevos desafíos y oportunidades para las familias diaspóricas que encuentran nuevas formas de asegurar la vida en múltiples escalas. Resumo Em janeiro de 2010 um violento terremoto devastou o Haiti. Em áreas como a capital, Port-au-Prince, a tragédia foi agravada por uma epidemia de cólera. A crise prolongada ilumina a resiliência das pessoas na interseção de duas dinâmicas: a que aponta o caráter relacional e vital das casas haitianas e a que tematiza a mobilidade para produzir vida. Enraizada no mundo pós-plantação, a casa (kay) não é só um espaço limitado por fronteiras físicas, mas realizada conceitual e materialmente em diversas escalas: as pessoas pertencem a muitas casas interdependentes e as casas pertencem a muitas pessoas inter-relacionadas, através de vínculos suturados no espaço e no tempo e entre vivos e mortos. Na esteira do desastre de 2010, e em meio à pandemia de Covid-19, novos desafios e oportunidades surgem para as famílias diaspóricas à medida que criam novas maneiras de assegurar formas vitais em múltiplas escalas.

Home Otherwise: Living Archives and Half-Life Politics in Post-Fallout Coastal Fukushima

While the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan forced residents out of their coastal Fukushima homes, transforming familiar ecologies into sites of estrangement, Naoko and neighbors remain invested in the material objects and spiritual relations of their houses, within and despite the logics of contamination. These desires to repair domestic livelihoods to nurture a sense of home (ie) and the idea of dying well (ii shinikata) challenge critical theories of nuclear fallout, which frame contamination’s impacts in terms of biopolitical logics and planetary scales. Thus, although contamination regiments the lives of residents through what I call a half-life politics, their practices of house-ing defy these strictures, as planetary contamination becomes experiential, ethnographic, and interscalar, and as people attempt to remake lives in an already injured and irradiated world. 要旨 2011 年東日本大震災に起因する東京電力福島第一発電所事故は近隣の森や 生態系を汚染し、多くの福島県浜通り地区の住民達を長期避難に追いやった。し かしながら住民の多くは汚染されなくなく避難した『家』との縁を切るのではな く、個々の考える『いい死に方』を求め汚染された家との物質的、精神的つながり 求め続けた。このような避難民の原子力事故後の行動は、人間と放射性物質の関 係性を生物的ダメージに特化して語るフォールアウト関連の学術的思考や、事故 後の政策に見られる汚染中心の『半減期的政治』とは異なる考え方の必要性を示 している。この論文は文化人類学的アプローチを使い、人はどのようにして『家』 を保持しようとする行動の中で自分以外のモノとのつながりを認知し、放射能汚 染の様々な規模 -その地域性や普遍性- を理解し、それと共存して行こうとす るのかという問いへの回答を探る. Resumo Enquanto o desastre nuclear de 2011 no Japão forçou os residentes de Fukushima a abandonar suas casas, transformando ecologias familiares em locais de estranhamento, Naoko e seus vizinhos continuam a investir em objetos e em relações espirituais com as suas casas agora emolduradas pela lógica da contaminação. O desejo de recuperar o sentido de lar (ie) e a ideia de morrer bem (ii shinikata) desafia as teorias críticas da contaminação radioativa que maiormente enfatizam o seu impacto em termos biopolíticos e em escala planetária. Assim, embora a contaminação regule o dia a dia dos moradores através do que eu chamo de half-life politics, suas práticas de house-ing desafiam essas restrições. A etnografia revela a contaminação planetária como sendo experiencial e interescalar, e mostra as pessoas refazendo as suas vidas em um mundo já irradiado e ferido. Resumen Mientras el desastre nuclear de 2011 en Japón obligó a los residentes de Fukushima a abandonar sus hogares, transformando ecologías familiares en lugares de extrañamiento, Naoko y sus vecinos siguen invirtiendo en objetos y en relaciones espirituales con sus casas ahora envueltas en la lógica de la contaminación. Los deseos de recuperar el sentido de hogar (ie) y la idea de morir bien (ii shinikata) desafían las teorías críticas sobre la contaminación radioactiva que en su mayoría enfatizan los impactos biopolíticos y la escala planetaria. Así, aunque la contaminación regula el cotidiano a través de lo que llamo half-life politics, las prácticas de house-ing desafían estas restricciones. La etnografía revela a la contaminación planetaria como experiencial e interescalar y muestra a las personas rehaciendo sus vidas en un mundo ya herido e irradiado.

Embodied Urbanisms: Corruption and the Ecologies of Eating and Excreting in India's Real Estate Economies

This article studies metabolic systems of food, body, and waste within the urban development politics of the city of Gurgaon (now Gurugram) in India’s National Capital Region. I link rapid urban transformation within the region, the labor required to produce it, and the speculative real estate economy that governs it to the phenomenology of body politics in the region. In particular, I examine corruption as both a political-economic and a physical, caste-based narrative to argue that corruption connects embodiment and urban development ecologies to each other. This allows corruption discourses in Gurgaon to form a critique of real estate economies; changing urban environments are felt and critiqued through body politics and experienced at once as a peril and a pleasure. This work is based on fifteen months of ethnographic research in the construction industry in NCR involving members across the production chain of real estate, including landowners, investment bankers, developers, engineers, architects, foremen, and laborers.

The Dying Home: “Bad Deaths” and Spatial Inscriptions of Mourning in a Favela

In Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, where residents have experienced economic precarity and racialized police violence, “good deaths,” wrought by natural causes and at old age, are distinguished from “bad deaths,” which may take victims’ entire families and houses. This essay chronicles the story of Maria who died at fifty-two, following the death of her youngest son at the hands of the police, and inquires into the generativity of mourning related to these two bad deaths. As graffiti and altars became spatial inscriptions of a new moralization of space, Maria’s house gradually transformed from a substrate of life into a marker of death. In the end, the home died too, as it was sold and its attendant social relations were unmade. Bad deaths thus reveal the moral entanglement between families, communities, and the materiality of houses, as well as the severance of these ties in the face of violence and intergenerational loss. Resumo Nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro, onde os moradores convivem com a precariedade econômica e a violência policial racializada, as “boas mortes”, de causas naturais e em idade avançada, diferem das “mortes ruins”, que podem atingir a família das vítimas e as próprias casas. Este ensaio conta a história de Maria, que morreu aos 52 anos, depois do assassinato de seu filho caçula pela polícia, e analisa como o luto dessas duas “mortes ruins” se perpetua. Assim como grafittis e altares se tornam inscrições de uma nova moralização do espaço, a casa de Maria foi se transformando de um substrato de vida em um signo de morte. Afinal, a casa também morre e suas relações sociais são desfeitas. “Mortes ruins” revelam articulações entre famílias, comunidades e a materialidade das casas, assim como o rompimento desses laços frente à violência e às perdas intergeracionais. Resumen En las favelas de Río de Janeiro, donde las personas conviven con la precariedad económica y con la violencia policial racializada, las “muertes buenas” de causas naturales y en edad avanzada, se diferencían de las “muertes malas” que pueden golpear a las familias de las víctimas y a los propios hogares. Este ensayo cuenta la historia de María, que murió a los 52 años después de que su hijo menor fuera asesinado por la policía, y examina cómo se perpetúa el luto de estas dos “muertes malas”. Al igual que los grafitis y los altares, que se convierten en inscripciones de una nueva moralización del espacio, la casa de María pasa de ser un sustrato de vida a un signo de muerte. Al fin y al cabo, la casa también murió y sus relaciones sociales se deshicieron. Las “muertes malas” revelan articulaciones entre las familias, las comunidades y la materialidad de las casas, así como la ruptura de estos vínculos ante la violencia y las pérdidas intergeneracionales.

“Masking” Makeup: Cosmetics and Constructions of Race in Rio de Janeiro

This article examines applications of bright, eye-catching makeup on the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Tracking the aesthetic decisions of makeup artists and their clients, I analyze how colorful manipulations of the bodily surface relate to local constructions of race. But the bodily surface does not simply reflect established and conventional understandings of race, nor are the aesthetics described herein merely symbolic of assumptions of difference. Instead, the aesthetic practices portrayed in this article may also be regarded as experimental, “nondiscursive” moments—operating on a complementary semiotic register—in the production of yet-to-be actualized ideas about race and being. This research shows how makeup practices often disrupt the aesthetic and conceptual links that tie insides to outsides, essences and souls to physical appearance, and in so doing chip away at the foundations on which race in Brazil has historically been built. Through sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork (2019–2020) in Rio’s northern suburbs, I observed as disparate aesthetic practices—namely, beautification and transformation—merged with eclectic understandings of the body and notions of being. Through these alternating lenses, makeup enthusiasts often interpreted material signs of the body as pointing to categorical constructions of race, on the one hand, and to beauty, sex, and desire, on the other.These semiotic oscillations and their interpretations often stood in conflict with established racial discourses, and yet rather than being exceptional, I argue that such exploratory, sensuous aesthetics are in fact mundane. Taking as a starting point the understanding that racial discourse in Brazil, as elsewhere, is internally ambiguous and rife with epistemic conflict, this article describes nondiscursive aesthetic practices as strands of material disorder—latent with possibility but often incongruous with what we think we know about race—working to forge novel understandings of race, beauty, and the body.

The Immune Home: Domestic Enclaves, Diffuse Protections

This essay tracks a paradigm shift in the use of chemicals to control malaria: away from insecticidal approaches, focused on killing mosquitoes within private domestic dwellings, and toward the creation of protective communal atmospheres. An ongoing study of the efficacy of spatial repellents to reduce malaria transmission in rural Tanzania provides an opportunity to rethink the oikographic assumptions of malaria control—and of many global health interventions—and to foreground the specific relationalities of peri-domestic spaces. Yet a sense of moral ambivalence permeates this inquiry, as malaria prevention becomes untethered from any long-lasting material improvement in the house. We reflect on the power of chemicals to reveal chronic forms of neglect and, just possibly, conjugate new, if diffuse, forms of communitas.

Weedy Finance: Weather Insurance and Parametric Life on Unstable Grounds

Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, where insurance companies are now selling weather derivatives to poor farmers, this article tracks financial practices that depend less on the healthy crops and more on the weeds that thrive among the profitable plants. Parametric insurance operates like a derivative and is triggered by certain weather conditions, which raises questions about the limits of survivability for human-crop relations. I sketch out a series of concerns about weeds as an entry point and helpful heuristic for multiple overlapping kinds of speculation in a multispecies, capitalist, and troubled landscape. By gridding the world to a limited set of expedient parameters, what generative social and human grounds do we lose in the process? A speculative anthropological imaginary might posit “weedy finance” as a critical standpoint and set of political claims for casting climate-based finance as one of the lively systems that can and should be intentionally and selectively weeded out.

Amazonian House-ing: A Visual Anthropology Essay

This visual essay documents the house-ing practices of Amazonian river dwellers and urban and peri-urban residents in the face of large-scale development projects. In Altamira (Pará, Brazil), the construction of the third-largest hydroelectric dam in the world, the Belo Monte Plant, has led to the flooding of housing areas along rivers and the displacement of residents into collective urban resettlements. Although the complexities of people’s living did not enter the engineers’ calculations or the public policy agenda, the residents improvised construction materials and aesthetic repertoires to preserve the relationships that constituted their local ecologies. Our visual ethnography aims to re-center the situated purview of the resettled, re-visibilizing the house as an index of ineffaceable livelihood and as an ongoing terrain of contestation and continuous Amazonization. Resumo Este ensaio visual documenta as práticas de house-ing de ribeirinhos e habitantes urbanos e peri-urbanos da Amazônia, confrontados com grandes projetos de desenvolvimento. Em Altamira (Pará, Brasil), a construção da terceira maior hidroelétrica do mundo, a usina de Belo Monte, conduziu ao alagamento de áreas habitacionais e ao deslocamento de seus moradores para novos assentamentos urbanos coletivos. Embora as especificidades do mundo vivido dessas pessoas não tenham entrado no cálculo dos engenheiros, nem na agenda das políticas públicas, os moradores improvisaram materiais construtivos e repertórios estéticos para preservar as relações que constituíam suas ecologias locais. Esta etnografia visual busca restituir a perspectiva situada dos deslocados, dando visibilidade à casa como índice dos modos de viver e como um terreno aberto de contestação e de contínua amazonização. Resumen Este ensayo visual documenta las prácticas de house-ing de los ribereños y de los habitantes urbanos y periurbanos de Amazonia que se enfrentan a grandes proyectos de desarrollo. En Altamira (Pará, Brasil), la construcción de la tercera mayor represa hidroeléctrica del mundo, la usina Belo Monte, provocó la inundación de áreas de vivienda y el desplazamiento de sus habitantes a nuevos asentamientos urbanos colectivos. Aunque las especificidades del mundo vivido por estas personas no entraron en los cálculos de los ingenieros ni en la agenda de las políticas públicas, la gente improvisa materiales de construcción y repertorios estéticos para preservar las relaciones que constituían sus ecologías locales. Esta etnografía visual pretende recuperar la perspectiva de los desplazados, dando visibilidad a la casa como índice de formas de vida y como terreno abierto a la permanente contestación y amazonización.

The Multiply Produced Film: Collaboration, Ethnography, and Feminist Epistemology

This article introduces the “multiply produced film” as a methodology and analytic that highlights the asymmetrical dynamics inherent to collaboration. I draw on (auto)ethnographic material from the making of Get By (2014), a film on worker-community solidarity, to explore collaboration across race, class, and gender in subject matter and method. I situate the multiply produced film within a genealogy that grafts ontological insights from the anthropology of exchange onto the epistemological contributions of feminist, decolonial, and visual anthropologists committed to collaboration. I argue that as a method, collaborative filmmaking has the potential to challenge narrow Western conceptions of autonomy and authorship through shared authority and fluid roles that engender a cascading multivocality that shapes the resulting filmic form. As an analytic, the multiply produced film reveals how collaboration entails a fundamental tension between the gift-like exchanges of solidarity and the outwardly commoditized form (e.g., films, books) produced by such exchanges, raising questions about asymmetries of power, prestige, and accountability.