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Lani Chung
Professor Poole/Das
TA nder Celik
Invitation to Anthropology
Essay #1
22 February 2014
Essay #1
Peter Bensons El Campo and Janet Carstens After Kinship are two works that attempt to
detail the concept of home in different localities and circumstances. El Campo strives to
explain how structural violence is inflicted on Mexican laborers working in labor camps, while
After Kinship illustrates how bonds of kinship are developed as a result of sharing intimacies
within common residences. In order to do this, the authors use a variety of observational
strategies to formulate interpretations regarding the home. Some similar processes utilized are
ethnographic accounts of diverse cultural perspectives on the meaning behind homes through the
observation of language, human interactions, and physical structures. It is through these analyses
done on the home that the two authors are able to make their own interpretational arguments
regarding the implications of homes on human culture and life.
Bensons fieldwork largely consisted of observations that he gathered through
interactions with Mexican laborers and a farm-owner. One very important observation acquired
through his investigation was the type of language that the laborers used to describe the labor
camps. He noticed that North Carolinians and Mexican laborers alike did not acknowledge the
labor camps as a home in its traditional sense. When giving directions, labor camps are not
counted in a string of housesnor do migrant farmworkers call the camp a casa, preferring
campo (Benson 605). The way the word homecalled casa in Spanishis reserved when
describing the labor camps indicates that although they were technically a place of residence for
the laborers, they did not carry important elements often associated with homes. In fact, the
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migrants would rather call the camps campo, which refers to various aspects of their lives and
their work, but tends to carry negative connotations associated with depravity and dissatisfaction.
For many workers, everything is el campo (Benson 606). By grouping all aspects of their
livesboth work and homeunder the umbrella term of campo, a sense of complete
hierarchical dominance over all spheres of the laborers lives can be interpreted.
Carsten collects similar linguistic observations through her ethnographic research on
examples of household models from various countries. In her account of the Portuguese home,
she explains that the house, casa, is also known as lar, hearth or home, or as fogo, fireplace
(Carsten 38). The interchangeability in meaning that exists within each aforementioned term
indicates the crucial nature that the hearth plays within the sphere of Portuguese culture. Carsten
capitalizes on this idea by interpreting the importance that the act of collective cooking and
eating played in creating bonds of kinship within households. She explains that the hearth
symbolizes the unity of those who live together, which is why terms such as lar and fogo
includes the hearth and home being articulated in one expression (Carsten 39). It is through close
observations regarding the language used to express the different conceptualizations of the home
in various ethnographic examples that both authors are able to make important interpretations
and inferences in respect to the arguments that each develops through their work.
The human relationships that manifest within and beyond the home are also crucial to
consider when interpreting the different ideological frameworks that exist among its inhabitants.
It is even more so since the house provides a link between the inside and outside and also
mimics social norms that are prevalent in society (Lecture 2/4). In his ethnographic account,
Benson observes the many measures that the farm-ownerknown as Craigtakes in order to
ensure that the camp is always properly inspected, up to code, and livable for the workers. He
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observes how Craig does his best to have face-to-face interactions with the workers by making
personal visits to the camps. Although the worker-owner relationship in this situation initially
seems positive, a totally different interpretation is expressed when Benson takes the time to hear
the thoughts of the workers themselves. According to the interviews he conducts with the
workers, Benson finds that they dont see the kindness behind Craigs actions as much as they
see selfishness and economic motives. They claim [Craig] wouldnt come and eat dinner in the
kitchen [at the camp]. He wouldnt use [the camp] bathroom (Benson 599). It is by considering
multiple accounts of the worker-owner relationship that Benson is able to interpret its true
nature: Although Craig sees himself as going above and beyond, distrust arises as the crew
senses some other motive besides a genuine desire to interact (Benson 600). The inauthentic
attempts that Craig makes to take care of the camp and his unwillingness to actually be present
in it while associating with his workers causes a distinction to emerge between usnative
born Americansand the laborers who are often regarded as others. This reflects the larger
social tendency to accept stigma that emphasizes foreign laborers as inferior, which goes on to
support Bensons argument regarding the persistence of structural violence within labor camps.
Carsten on the other hand makes observations on the institution of marriage and its
influence on the development of kinship within the Zafinmaniry home to further support her
argument that kinship grows through personal intimacies shared within the home. She outlines
the Zafimaniry practice of marriage, which reflects the idea that the gradual process of building
a house and that of making a marriage are actually two sides of a single phenomenon (Carsten).
This means that as couple progresses through different stages of marriagebetrothal,
matrimony, and childbearingthe home is simultaneously strengthened. Carsten notes that a
betrothal is followed by the groom constructing what is, for the time being, a rather flimsy and
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fragile new house (Carsten 43). The delicate nature of the constructed home represents the still
friable nature of the relationship between an engaged couple as they have yet to be married.
However, Carsten observes that the male improves upon the house as children are born into the
family. She is therefore able to interpret that [t]his example, which brings together an aesthetic
of the house with an aesthetic of the human relations within it, also underlines the processual
nature of both house-building and of kin relations (Carsten 45). A couples house and kinship
are so closely linked that the success of the marriage can be determined by the condition of the
home.
The physical structure of the home is a significant element in defining the amount of
privacy that its inhabitants are given, and it can reflect certain social ideological elements within
itself. In El Campo, Benson interprets a lack of privacy in the labor camps, which subsequently
causes laborers to experience the absence of a work-home division. He observes that the camp
is a conglomeration of cells, each bedroom an elementary structure with a single opening
(Benson 608). The camps are crowded, the walls are thin, and the interior is so hot that the door
must always be propped open. These are all reasons that add to the public nature of the laborers
homes. In addition, Benson also observes the methods used by the farm-owner to keep the
laborers under surveillance, and deduces that a felt lack of privacy [is] also linked to a problem
of constant illumination (Benson 608). Through his observations, Benson is able to interpret a
more significant analysis of how lacking privacy fuels the endurance of structural violence
within labor camps: The spatial and architectural composition of camps informs a
phenomenology of habitation in which social ostracism and stigma seem spackled onto the
facility itself (Benson 607). Carsten does a similar analysis of the architectural elements that are
present in the Algerian home known as the Kabyle. She notes that while the lower, dark part of
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the house was associated with women and animals The light, upper part was associated with
humans, especially men (Carsten 47-48). The way females occupied spaces in the house that
were shared with animals and characterized by lowness and darkness indicates strong gender
divisions within society as a whole. Oftentimes, the home can be seen as the micro-picture of
the cosmos where larger societal values are realized through enactments and practices (Lecture
2/4). Carsten, by recognizing this correlation between the home and society, is able to analyze
the gender-based kinship relations that manifest within the household merely by examining the
physical structure of the home.
Although Benson and Carsten attempt to describe very different phenomena through their
respective works, their process of examining ethnographic examples is incredibly similar. Both
have strong focuses on the relationship of the home to their corresponding topics of interest
structural violence and kinship. Despite the stark differences that manifest between their
individual topics, they share commonalities in terms of observational strategies. They both utilize
the study of language, human relationships, and physical structures in relation to the home in
order to derive complex interpretations of what these elements mean in the larger context of their
work. The similarities in methodology that manifests between Benson and Carsten help to bring
attention to the universality of ethnographic research techniques in analyzing vast spectrums of
anthropological phenomena.





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Works Cited
Benson, Peter. "EL CAMPO: Faciality and Structural Violence in Farm Labor Camps." Cultural
Anthropology 23.4 (2008): 589-629. Web.
Carsten, Janet. "Houses of Memory and Kinship." After Kinship. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
UP, 2004. 31-56. Web.
Das, Veena. "House-Home-Relations." Invitation to Anthropology. Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore. 4 Feb. 2014. Lecture.