ABSTRACT
The interior of the Xinguano house is oval in shape and divided into two parts: the center, a public household area where the occupants of the entire house mingle and receive visitors, and domestic family areas at either end of the house. Like the celebrated Kabyle house, described by Bourdieu (1970),
the house, its partitions and spaces, inscribes on the body and in cultural memory, the basic schemas and divisions of culture through a process of objectification and embodiment. The Xinguano house is also conceived and built according to metaphors of the human body (Gregor 1977; Sà 1979). House members enter through the low front (egetilopïgï) or back (gipopïgï) doors, the only openings to the house, visitors by the front alone (Figure 8.1).
