Etxekoak Eta Familiakoak (house-family and blood-family): an anthropology of architecture in Araotz Valley (Basque country)

• Grant number: 14/19818-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: December 01, 2014
• End date: November 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Luiz Mattar Villela
• Grantee: Ion Fernandez de las Heras Lopez de Guereñu
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research is intended to build an ethnography of the basque rural area by problematising a particular type of house, the baserri or caserio vasco. I propose developing such work taking as a starting point 3 specific baserriak (and their relative households) out of the total 60 which make up the whole auzo (rural neighborhood) of Araotz, in the municipality of Oñati (Guipuzkoa, Basque Country, Spain). As a general hypothesis, I suggest that two distinct family models can be identified in this rural environment, which are categorized by two mutually exclusive notions: etxekoak (those who share a home; house-family) and familiakoak (blood relatives; blood-family); this means, a rural and traditional kinship (of house) and a urban and modern one (of blood). However, it is not my intention to display them as two clear and differentiated structures, but to think them as existing only in their specific articulations (material, legal, territorial, moral, politic, etc); the house is the chosen tropo by which I pretend to develop a ethnography of those articulations. In this regard, it will be necessary to engage in a dialogue with basque context ethnographies to date (concerning anthropology of peasant societies), with the anthropology of kinship about house societes (widening the discussion further than European kinship notions) and with the anthropology of architecture (referring material and space issues). (AU)