Resumen

DELFINO, Daniel D.. The gales of state politics and the resistant language of the "'Mocha' Houses" in the puna of Catamarca. Cuad. Fac. Humanid. Cienc. Soc., Univ. Nac. Jujuy [online]. 2015, n.47, pp.181-195. ISSN 1668-8104.

Housing spaces can express actively or elusively the values of a society at a given time, providing a picture of the expectations and possibilities of a domestic group. In this sense, they represent a field where battles of material and symbolic order are being fought, making possible to understand both aspects of social relationships, as of the conception of nature. The genealogy of the rancho category implies a long history of subalternization being both functional to colonial policies, modernist as much as neo-liberal, serving as a gateway for state meddling into rural areas. We present part of the results of an ethno-archaeological study on vernacular architecture that allowed to know the model characteristics of settlement systems in the district. During the past century and the present one, so far this model has been repeatedly challenged by the implementation of State policies under the stigmatizing definition of rancho architectures, without any analysis on the convenience of its designs or materials used therein. Finally, from the exercise of a socially useful archaeology arises the ethical relevance to architecturally intervene from the building construction of the Center of Reception and Interpretation of the Museum Integral of the Reserve of Biosphere of Laguna Blanca dependent of the Universidad Nacional de Catamarca

Palabras clave : Socially Useful Archaeology; Architecture; Social Stigma; Ethnoarchaeology; Southern Puna; Ranches.