Social archaeology of housing from a Latin American perspective

Abstract

This article discusses the structuring of domination in everyday life, studied through private housing material culture, over a period of several centuries. Our case study deals with the processes of use of space and the changes in middle-class households in Buenos Aires since the late eighteenth century, highlighting both world and Latin American contexts. We show how morphological and spatial changes in households are related both to the wider world capitalist context and to local conditions, shaping people’s lives. We focus on the controlling features of housing, affecting not only the middle classes, but potentially the whole spectrum of social classes. Capitalism tends to individualize space, create private environments, restrict movement and control movement in general, and houses as material artifacts reflect these tendencies. We conclude that the study of Buenos Aires housing enables us to note that there has been a growing tendency to restrict circulation within the house, enforcing a controlling, bourgeois way of life.