Architectures of the People: Material and Cultural Politics of Housing in Sao Paulo, 1950-1995.

Abstract

How does the built environment become political? In this dissertation, I address this question by investigating the politics of low-income housing in São Paulo from the mid-twentieth century until the mid-1990s. A growing sociological literature on materiality and power has contributed to a better understanding of the cultural dynamics of different material and spatial phenomena, but it has not led to a broader theoretical clarification of how the built environment influences meaning-making practices and how it is further shaped by the variety of meanings that circulate in society, as well as how it becomes associated with available (but constantly changing) political discourses and practices. I develop a theoretical framework on how materiality becomes incorporated in circuits of social practice based on a theoretical integration of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and Charles Peirce's semiotics. The process of articulating semio-material practices (materials, forms, methods of construction, and forms of using space) and political repertoires (discourses and practices pertaining to the exercise of power) is always situated, limited, and pragmatic. In light of these concepts, I show that progressive architects and several other actors involved in the production of the built environment came up with two main programs for low-income housing in São Paulo from the 1950s up to the 1990s: a first program centered on the quest for the industrialization of construction and a program formulated after the late 1970s that centered on the participation of future residents in the practices of design and construction. Each of these programs is a typical articulation of a certain political repertoire and a repertoire of practices of design, construction, and habitation. In addition, each of these programs relies on and helps to reinforce certain images of the people for whom those residences should be produced and that they would help to constitute as a collectivity. The theoretical framework elaborated in this dissertation sheds light on a diversity of processes of material and political articulation of the built environment in different historical and geographic contexts.