ABSTRACT
Organizationally, houses are sites of the ongoing performance of meaning, change, and opposition. Representing this process makes it apparent that knowledge and interpretation are as organizationally contingent and constructed as the community's houses. Organizational interventions are sought when companies plan for or are surprised by change. Organizational interventions are sought when companies plan for or are surprised by change. More informal organizations such as communities also confront change, but with a crucial difference for the researcher. Modifications are neither random nor peculiar to individuals. The most obvious boundary across which modifications are not understood involves the restoration of the older styled and vernacular houses in the community. Houses are "preserved" then, not in form but in process through modifications. Developing a participatory research style invites a dialogic approach to fieldwork which facilitates the time spent documenting housing modifications, studying archival records, census data, council minutes, interviewing contractors and carpenters, bureaucrats and homeowners.
