ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relations and tensions among people, places, labour and development through the narratives of care as practised by three generations of women from La Ladrillera, a brickmaking community. It describes the reconstruction of the intergenerational transformations of the different places the brickmaking women inhabit: body, home, environment and public arena. Women’s practices of difference present other ways of thinking and doing about bodies and places in transformation processes where the practices of care are essential to societies. “People’s environments include the meanings, values and general ways of being that characterise and distinguish between different communities”. The environment in La Ladrillera has been constructed through time. Brickmaking requires brickmakers to get up early in the morning, prepare the brick mix and step on it to make it smooth. Women usually work close to home in yards owned by them, their husbands, relatives or landlords.
