Essay

Social Anthropology 1A: Final Essays

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The University Of Edinburgh (ED)

Two 1,500-word essays responding to the assigned prompts: Why is the house a potent symbol for anthropological analysis and Why do rituals heal? Both responses are well-researched and focus on large scope, cross-cultural observations obtained through extensive reading. Bibliography is extensive and...

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Uploaded on January 30, 2024
Number of pages 7
Written in 2023/2024
Type Essay
Professor(s) Unknown
Grade B

anthropology
ethnography
the life course
rituals
cultural rituals
house
healing rituals
social anthropology
the symbol of the house
initiation rituals

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Why is the house a potent symbol for anthropological analysis?

Introduction

Joao Biehl and Federico Neiburg (2021) wrote, “There is a reciprocal process of people making houses
and houses making people.” The house is a potent symbol for anthropological analysis for this very
reason. Both the ways people create houses and the way houses influence the social lives of people can
help explain a society’s deep-running social conventions, traditions, and the challenges it faces.

How People Make Houses

People ‘make’ a house in many different ways. For those living in Andean villages, the ‘making of the
house’ or zafacasa occurs over long periods of time and with the help of the community. Originally, a
zafacasa included a gathering of the whole family and neighbours, a large communal meal, and collective
collaboration on the renovation of the house. (Leinaweaver, 2009) Inevitably, times have changed. With
family members dispersed over great, and what feel to be insurmountable, distances, transnational
migration has challenged traditional feelings of community (allyu), which puts an emphasis on centrality
and physical proximity. (Leinaweaver, 2009)

The power of house-making, and zafacasa, prevails despite this obstacle. Now funded by remittances sent
home by immigrants, zafacasa utilises new building techniques and materials in more urban
environments, drawing in community members and acting as a place where “kin groups, dispersed
through migration, may reconstitute and reassert their social connections.” (Leinaweaver, 2009) Andean
people have found a way to keep bringing their kin, even those who are abroad, close with the creation
and renovation of the house.

The process of house-making is reciprocal and rife with potent symbolism. As the bones of the house are
built and revitalised through renovation, in turn so is the community and family that rallies around it. This
shared investment and celebration ties relatives who are thousands of miles away back to their home
villages and families. Here, the transcendence of relationships in the building of a home helps to indicate
the significance Andean people place on familial relations despite newfound physical distance and the
loss of traditional definitions of community (allyu).

The Zafimaniry of Madagascar approach house-making differently. For them, marriage and the house are
intertwined, so much so that instead of asking, “Are you married?”, it is customary to ask, “Do you have a
house with a hearth?” (Bloch,1998). The process of Zafimaniry house-building begins with a young
couple. Two young people regularly having intercourse exclusively with each other are steered through a
series of stages out of which they emerge in a relationship comparable to the English definition of
“marriage” (Bloch,1998). Importantly, though, to acquire this title, they must have built one thing: a
house.

At first the walls of the house are made of thinly woven bamboo, so thin, in fact, that they can see and
speak through it. These thinly woven walls represent the newness and uncertainty of the relationship. As
the couple gets closer and their relationship stronger, they strengthen the house in turn. It is important to

, note that in Zafimaniry culture, compatibility and therefore the strength of a relationship is equated with
the fertility of a couple. Producing children is viewed as essential to proving that a couple is compatible.
(Bloch,1998)

So, as the couple have more and more children, the materials making up the house change. Bamboo is
swapped for hardwood (teza), and the marriage is solidified in a house that resembles that of the couple’s
parents. The symbolism of using teza, a “wood, that is made to last, and last beyond the mortality of its
human initiators” (Bloch,1998), powerfully demonstrates that the anthropology of house-building can tell
us significant amounts about a society’s customs and social relationships.

How Houses Make People

We can learn a lot about the ways in which houses ‘make’ people by investigating homelessness. By
examining homelessness and the treatment of homeless people, we can understand the social significance
of having a place to call home and the many amenities the home can provide. Before we explore this, I
would first clarify that while the house, and lack of one, moulds individuals’ experiences in every society,
I am not claiming that it fundamentally changes who they are as a person. We will simply be exploring
how a house shapes people’s presence in society and even their health.

First, we can examine Bucharest, Romania, in the years after communism. While people in Communist
Bucharest struggled with poverty, it was not until the post-communist era that homelessness became a
large problem. Faced with low wage jobs and the departure of industry following the opening of
Romania’s borders for trade, older residents of the city were forced out onto the street. At night, in
shelters, they found connection with others “often gathered in the hallway to share cigarettes and mugs of
Nescafé.” But during the day, they struggled, asking the same questions an old man asked anthropologist
Bruce O’Neill, “Where should I go? What should I eat? Who can I sit and talk to?” (O’Neill, 2014)

Under Communism, Romanians found solidarity in a shared poverty, with long lines for bread and
medicine becoming a place for conversation, gossip, and community building. Since the country’s
adoption of capitalism and the sudden wave of consumerism that accompanied it, this has changed. Today,
poverty and the lack of a home, as well as the lack of amenities which the home provides, is demonised,
something clearly evident by the way homeless people are treated. When a woman in Bucharest shouts at
a homeless man, “Why did they ever let a homeless man (unboschetar) on the bus! You make me want to
vomit! Someone open a window!” (O’Neill, 2014) the other patrons of the bus are unsurprised and quiet,
even opening windows in support of the woman. The homeless man does not seem even visibly unclean
(O’Neill, 2014) but her shouts despite this prompt a question: What does the home give to us? What place
does it grant us in society?

For the woman on the bus in Bucharest, the answer was cleanliness. For some hospital staff in California,
the answer is health. Staff of two safety-net hospitals in areas with high rates of homelessness and low
rates of affordable housing saw “lack of housing as a principal determinant of poor health.” (Hanssmann,
et al, 2021). Medical staff in two Californian studies noted the negative effects of equating homelessness

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