ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Levi-Strauss’s contribution and the way it has turned anthropological inquiry toward the architectural and the different responses and innovations that have resulted. It addresses the specific material qualities at play, such as partibility, genericism, stillness, and inversion and how these relate to the processual nature of the house within Levi-Strauss’s concept of the house society. Levi-Strauss’s key contribution, according to Carsten and Hugh-Jones, is the recognition of the importance of native categories. Janet Carsten’s discussion of Langkawi houses illustrates how the resolution of opposing interests is negotiated with the materiality of Malay Langkawi houses. Another example within this house society paradigm in social anthropology comes from Maurice Bloch and his discussion of house building and wood carving among the Malagasy in Madagascar. Ancestors are literally the solid “root” of the house, their descendants as particularized in the individual household head are the ephemeral “tip” of that lineage that is eventually subsumed in the larger-order entity.
