Indigenous Architecture and Relational Senses of Personhood

G09 5

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Abstract

Given anthropological theories of how houses reflect and regenerate symbolic schemes, I propose to address in this presentation this question: what, if anything, can be learnt from the materially simple dwellings of indigenous forest peoples, who to date still partially maintain hunting and gathering traditions? While these dwellings may give outsiders the impression of “temporary shelters” and “huts”, they have constituted for their dwellers a “permanent” way of dwelling, which presumably embodies and regenerates their specific cultural values, including specific senses of self and community. Drawing on an anthropological study of a forest-dwelling tribal people in the Nilgiri-Wynaad of South India (Nayaka, 1978-2004), I explore these senses, paying attention to cultural constructions of inside/outside, public/private, and separate/shared domains of life.