Things of the House: Material Culture and Migration from Post-Colonial Mozambique to Portugal

By Marta Vilar Rosales

Discussing multiple aspects of material culture and domestic consumption, this book tackles the relationship between the trajectories and biographies of people, families, houses and objects and how they intertwine and produce each other. Focusing on the life stories of a group of European and Catholic Brahmin Goan families of the colonial elite who left Mozambique after the country's independence in 1975, the book shows how material culture interferes with structuring dimensions of migratory experiences, in the management of family memories, ties and networks of belonging, as well as in the social dynamics of positioning, hierarchy and distinction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Apr 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781800739550

Marta Vilar Rosales

Marta Vilar Rosales is research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. She has conducted ethnographic research in Angola, Mozambique, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Australia and Portugal on contemporary migrations, everyday life and material culture. She received a Fulbright Schuman Award in 2021.

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Introduction

Things of the House¹ is the result of an extensive ethnography carried out between 2002 and 2006 with two groups of families of the former Portuguese colonial elites who were forced to migrate from Africa after the Carnation Revolution, in 1974. The publication² of its results fifteen years after its completion is exciting since this passage of time has allowed for the discovery of novel aspects, previously unnoticed, which have enriched this version of the manuscript with a more nuanced discussion of Portuguese colonial and post-colonial circulations.

The book explores a still relatively discrete domain in Portuguese anthropology, that of contemporary material culture. It does so in a particular context – the house – and in a field of study that receives considerable attention from the social sciences and the humanities – human migrations. More specifically, Things of the House investigates the materiality and domestic consumption practices of families with a common life experience: a long stay in Mozambique during the colonial period, followed by a period of forced migration to Portugal, shortly after the April Revolution of 1974.

My research has always privileged the material culture and domestic consumption practices of migrant populations. This was, however, my only inquiry in the field of Portuguese colonial and post-colonial studies. While preparing my dissertation, I was invited to take part in broader research aimed at exploring the processes of identity construction and negotiation of diverse groups that had circulated between Mozambique and Portugal during the colonial and post-colonial periods. This broad frame determined the selection of the Portuguese and the Catholic Brahmin Goan, the two best positioned groups in colonial society, as research units, as well as the adoption of a comparative approach that decisively structured the research outcomes. These decisions ended up having a profound impact on my future research. The relative lack of comparative studies focusing on the Portuguese elites justified, at the time, the focus on these two social groups. And it was this first ethnography that paved the way for later explorations of other contemporary migration movements – with a focus on the circulations of those least welcome and whose voices were less powerful – as a way of promoting a broader discussion of the diversity and complexity that contemporary migrations and migrant populations entail.

An analogous argument justifies the preference given to the daily life routines and consumption practices and to the mundane, and often invisible, domestic materiality in contexts of migration. Drawing on Miller’s (2008) material culture perspective, when an object goes unnoticed in the eyes of its subject at work, that object can be understood as all the more effective. In that same vein, priority has been given to everyday things and routinized consumptions, as well as to the families’ everyday household practices (Longhurst and Savage 1996; Mackay 1997a). As the term itself suggests, an approach centred on mundane routines promotes a focus on the ways in which subjects interact and appropriate things and how these appropriations contribute to stabilizing their daily lives (Mackay 1997a), are means to expressing their aspirations and idealizations (Clarke 2001) and for the materialization of their relationships and memories (Garvey 2001; Marcoux 2010).

The integration of material culture studies in the field of contemporary migrations illuminated the intersections between the movement of people and the movement of their things (Basu and Coleman 2008), as well as how they mutually established and supported each other (Burrell 2009; Rosales 2010a). Furthermore, it also supported the discussion of the families’ positioning strategies (Bourdieu 1979), identity reconfiguration and belonging (Rosales 2010b), both in colonial Mozambique and in Portugal.

The framework of this research began with the premise that material culture and consumer practices provide significant resources for the development of cultural and social activities (Douglas and Isherwood 1996; Baudrillard 2002 [1968]; Bourdieu 1979; Appadurai 2003a; Miller 1987) and in this sense constitute a setting (Miller 2010), that is, an effective context for everyday life. Within this frame, people and things are thought to coproduce the contexts they inhabit, objects establish lines of continuity between present and past, and the impacts of movement on materiality are not restricted to mobile objects or things. Moreover, the contradictions between the gains and losses of displacement are evident in the experiences and encounters with the objects through which they are expressed (Parrot 2012; Rosales 2017, 2018). Domestic materiality is a particularly effective setting for exploring these experiences, encounters and expressions. Although contemporary material culture clearly transcends the domestic sphere, its significance, as a context for tackling the relationships between people, and between people and things (Silverstone and Hirsch 1994; Gullestad 1995; Mackay 1997a; Warde 1996; Miller 1997, 2001c; Clarke 2001), has been widely acknowledged. Likewise, the home is a vital material setting in all migration experiences. Unlike other more public spaces, homes are somewhat less subjected to the constraints imposed by social structures (Rapport and Dawson 1998), and therefore particularly significant for addressing the evaluation, reorganization and repositioning processes resulting from migration. Homes provide room for integrating objects transported from other contexts (Harbottle 1996; Morley 2000; Petridou 2001), for the expression of loss (Rosales 2010a,b, 2014), for articulating and managing memories, and for maintaining relationships with the past (Marcoux 2001).

This book is organized into six chapters. The first chapter summarizes the theoretical framework, object of study and the methodology. The second chapter provides a brief historical, political and demographic contextualization that seeks to explain some of the fundamental features of Mozambique’s colonial history, namely its migration and colonization policies, transition to independence and decolonization. Given the origin of the families, special attention is paid to the characterization of migratory flows originating in Portugal and Goa and their return migration to Portugal, after independence. The third chapter addresses the families’ life experiences in colonial Mozambique. The fourth chapter provides an analysis of the families’ domestic material culture and consumption practices. More narrowly, this chapter focuses on the homes of the past in colonial Mozambique. The fifth chapter discusses the exit of the families and their things from Mozambique towards Portugal. The sixth and final chapter is devoted to an analysis and discussion of the families’ post-colonial life in Portugal. Following an identical structure to chapter four, this final chapter addresses the settling in processes of the families in their new domestic spaces and the way in which material culture and consumption practices contributed to forging their new sense of belonging and materializing, in general, memories of their past colonial experience and, in particular, of their lost African homes.

Notes

1. This book was financed by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the frame of the project UID/SOC/50013/2019.

2. A previous version (in Portuguese) of Things of the House was published with Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, Lisbon, in 2015.

Chapter 1

Movement, Materiality and Domestic Life

An Anthropological Approach

The social sciences, in the 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century, witnessed an intense debate around the topic of mass material culture and consumption. The increased visibility of this debate reflected, on the one hand, the recognition of consumption practices in contemporary societies and, on the other, the importance of rethinking the relationships between people, objects and services. The significant theoretical contributions resulting from these debates enabled the integration of this specific field of study into the different social sciences and, particularly, into anthropology and sociology. However, the interest in the topic should not be seen as recent but, rather, renewed. As Campbell (1995) pointed out, mass-produced artefacts, and their consumption, was the key topic of a broad set of classical theoretical productions, which centred discussions on the emergence, impacts and developments of the capitalist mode of production, as well as observations and analysis of it. The importance of the topic in the 1990s thus resulted less from innovative interrogations, than from a cultural turn (Warde 1996) in the social sciences that led to the establishment of the concept of the consumer as a complex and socially constructed entity, allowing its expansion beyond the limits imposed by the hegemonic and economistic vision of the autonomous and sovereign consumer. The result was the consolidation of use (of objects, goods and services) as a complex and plural process, whose functions and purposes needed to be interrogated.

This theoretical shift emerged as particularly original regarding the previous theoretical frame. Before this shift, consumption tended to be understood as the final stage of the process of production and, consequently, as a secondary or derivative moment of it. Miller (1987) specifically challenged this framing by highlighting the fact that academic production has always paid much more attention to the analysis of production, positioning it as the key moment in the emergence of relations of domination in contemporary societies, therefore neglecting the analysis of consumption and the mutual influences between the two. According to Miller (ibid.), the study of the relations between people and objects was progressively sidelined and restricted to use-value, reflecting a clear valorization of economic aspects to the detriment of social and cultural factors inherent in consumption practices. This argument illustrated, with some exceptions, the existence of a dominant perspective that contextualized material culture and consumption studies within the framework of modernity and, above all, the nature of the capitalist system of production. Moving beyond the devaluation of present-day consumer practices, Miller expanded the discussion of contemporary materiality beyond the contours of a moral framework (Miller 2001b) that deemed it destructive and anti-social.

Without questioning the pertinence of discussing the contours of the modern social order, and of its impacts on collective norms, social structures and individual experiences, this research sought to develop an approach which relies upon the effective practices of relating to materiality as the object of study. That is while recognizing the validity of previous discussions that privileged wider and perhaps more comprehensive approaches to contemporary materiality, this research acknowledges the pertinence of discussing the relationships between people and things through – creative, critical and therefore productive – everyday practices. This option was far from reflecting a relativization of the importance of the spheres of production and distribution. As Mackay (1997b) stated, affirming the pertinence of material culture and consumption as an object of study does not deny the importance of production and distribution. This would correspond to an inverse reproduction of the perspectives that tended to privilege them, while relativizing consumption. Thus, although privileging the appropriation and re-appropriation of things from the moment they leave the market, this research understood the relationship between production, distribution and consumption as mutually constitutive from the outset. It is also relevant to note that while the discussion of the impacts of mass consumption surpasses the objectives of the research, it is of the utmost pertinence. It is critical to bear in mind that the notion of the active consumer entails a set of implications that are far from positive. Hence, affirming the centrality of consumption practices within the framework of contemporary material culture does not correspond to a blurring of the disastrous developments carried out in the name of the consumer’s freedom of choice.

The debate around identity production and reproduction is as intense and visible as the one on the impacts of mass production and consumption in contemporary societies. Since identity topics intersect with all social and cultural dimensions, a discussion of them became imperative in most fields of research including material culture and migration. Social and cultural identity constitutes a vast and complex field of debate; this debate intensified as its basis shifted from relatively fixed and delimited parameters, which were progressively challenged in favour of multiple and fluid definitions (i.e. Beck 1992; Giddens 1994; Bauman 1997; Kellner 1995). To summarize, as opposed to social systems based on tradition, a hallmark of late modernity was that it was increasingly structured around internally referential logics (Giddens 1994), which triggered profound alterations on the level of personal identity, gradually assuming the form of a reflexive project (ibid.). In this context, personal biographies are progressively freed from the external aspects associated with pre-established collective ties and emerge, above all, as trajectories that integrate personal projects for the future and the present. In sustaining this perspective, it is not the intention to claim that others have been removed from the strategic ‘life-planning’ (Giddens 1994: 76) of individuals. On the contrary, it is important to clarify that identity construction, as a self-reflexive process, is not a praise for individualism, since the trajectory of the self acquires coherence precisely through the reflexive use of social contexts.

The consolidation of the theoretical proposals that conceptualize identity as self-reflexive processes had a considerable impact on the field of contemporary material culture and consumption studies in the 1990s. Today, however, there has been a progressive shift in the focus of the discussion. This is the result of diversified theoretical contributions and, particularly, of empirical studies, which point towards the importance that structural dimensions play in present-day biographic narratives. Drawing from this perspective, Warde (1996) emphasizes the pertinence of discussing and delimiting the actual control people have over their reflexive identities and proposes an alternative definition of identity as a co-production in which the collective structures work as a conditioning force.

During this research, consumption practices were thus conceptualized as resulting simultaneously from agency and contingency or, more precisely, as the expression of a balance between creativity and social constraints. This perspective necessarily affected how the relationship between identity and consumption was addressed. The centrality of the latter, as a critical element for identity construction, was relativized as consumption was positioned alongside other key social dimensions such as gender, race, ethnicity, kinship, belonging or nationality (Warde 1996). The importance of social and cultural contexts for identity production and reproduction was positively reviewed and, most importantly, the analytical lens partially shifted from the consumer to the object of consumption and its material dimensions. As a final note to this brief consideration, it is important to reaffirm that this research’s theoretical and methodological foundations stem from a basic, although valid, premise: the ability to contribute to answering the main questions that led the ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Mozambique and Portugal. Given the plurality of present-day theoretical discussions on the topics of migration and material culture, it seemed productive to make use of the frameworks and tools available in the social sciences to work towards the achievement of the research objectives. Theories, as ways of seeing and reflecting on reality, provide understandings and models of interpretation and explanation which draw attention to certain phenomena, their connections with other phenomena, and the wider social context. Theories are constructions, products of specific discourses, practices and institutions, and therefore do not transcend their social fields of production. Hence, instead of assuming a theory as the theory, or seeking to achieve a complex synthesis of various narratives, this research benefited from a multi-theoretical perspective that productively responded to its foundational questions.

Things of the House addresses the material culture and domestic consumption practices of two groups of families with a common past – an intergenerational life experience in Mozambique during the colonial period, interrupted by a period of forced migration to Portugal during the decolonization process. Although imprecise and generalist, this statement corresponded to the first delimitation of the research object of study which aimed at integrating materiality and everyday consumption practices within the framework of the particularly complex episode of the return migration from the former Portuguese colonies.

This starting point resulted from the progressive systematization of the following theoretical premises informed by the broad perspective presented above: a) the existence of a complex interdependent relationship between cultural contexts, material culture and consumption practices (Douglas and Isherwood 1996; Appadurai 2003a; Miller 1987; Howes 1996); b) the significance of consumption practices both as resources for and as materializations of identity (re)construction processes (Bourdieu 1979; Appadurai 2003a; Miller 1987; Lury 1997); c) the understanding of consumption as an activity that, going beyond the acquisition of goods and services, constitutes a social process of using and reusing things, whose meanings transform as they enter specific social contexts (Appadurai 2003a; Kopytoff 2003; Miller 1987, 1998a; Warde 1996); and d) the centrality of objects, and their material dimensions, in their relationships with people. Far from developing neutral participation in consumption practices, things embody social relationships and, in this sense, are responsible for the co-production of the reality in which they live (Miller 1987, 1998a; Warde 1996; Silverstone and Hirsch 1994; Lury 1997).

These premises were complemented by a second discussion focused on the specific features of domestic materiality in migration contexts. The families who participated in the research share a long-life experience in Mozambique, which ended with their forced migration to Portugal during the colony’s transition to independence. However, there is a significant element of differentiation between them, since they are descendants (second and third generations) of migrants originating from two distinct contexts – Portugal and Goa. This distinctive feature promoted a comparative approach which allowed for a discussion of the regularities and points of contact in the families’ migratory, colonial and post-colonial experiences. Equally, it allowed for a comparison of the specificities and points of rupture in their positioning as well as belonging strategies both in Mozambique and Portugal. In fact, all processes of self-determination and self-recognition embrace two broad formulations. The first results from the delimitation of a shared culture (Hall 2003), that is, of the core elements that produce the common history of a given group. From this perspective, collective identities fundamentally reflect historical experiences and shared cultural codes, by providing a unitary, stable and permanent framework of representations, meanings, delimitations and contextualization which subsists beyond the fluctuations of the present. The second recognizes that, in addition to the multiple points of contact, there is also a plurality of singularities and differentiations that actively contribute to the definition of ‘us’, or rather, of ‘whom we have become’. According to this second formulation, collective identities should be jointly understood as being, as well as becoming, that is, as something that is not previously defined, transcending space, time, history and culture. As Hall (2003) stated, cultural identities come from somewhere, but like everything historical, they are subject to the continuous action of history, culture and power.

Focusing on the families’ strategies of identity affirmation and re-composition from this double perspective implied the identification of the more stable and permanent life dimensions, as well as the disruptions and discontinuities introduced by movement, displacement and the need to integrate into a new social and cultural context. The adoption of this perspective was a major contribution to the delimitation and structuring of the object of study by promoting the analysis of the material culture and consumption practices of the families through a triple mediation: the families’ present context of residence (Portugal); their past shared context of belonging (colonial Mozambique); and their contexts of origin (Portugal, Goa). This was coupled with a determination that the home was the preferred unit of analysis, that is, the selection of the home as an ethnographic domain resulted not only from its material culture dimensions (Silverstone and Hirsch 1994; Gullestad 1995; Mackay 1997b; Miller 1997, 2001c; Rosales 2010a) but also from its relevance in migration experiences.

The home has always been considered a pivotal setting for addressing cultural production and reproduction in migration contexts. Homes shelter things and support the materialization of practices transported from previous contexts of belonging (Harbottle 1996; Morley 2000; Petridou 2001; Silvano 2002). They are spaces that acknowledge the expressions of loss and reassessment of the past and the present (Morley 2000; Marcoux 2001). And homes frame the management of memories and stimulate the production of original narratives and the rewriting of personal biographies (Miller 2001c,d; Rosales 2010a,b,c,d, 2012). The home, as a unit of analysis, situates the research at the level of daily life (Longhurst and Savage 1996). Addressing migrants’ experiences at the level of everyday life directs the researcher’s lens towards the ordinary dimensions and the routinized practices, as opposed to the exceptional and the episodic aspects of their lives: that is, it promotes an analytical angle that illuminates the modes through which migrants relate to, transform and appropriate diverse materials for stabilizing their life projects (Mackay 1997a), expressing their aspirations and ideals (Clarke 2001) and materializing their relationships, feelings and memories (Garvey 2001; Marcoux 2001).

Based on this discussion, the research was designed to discover how and to what extent the families’ homes a) expose their journeys, and integration and positioning strategies in colonial Mozambique; b) represent an expressive and productive domain that is relevant for understanding their original identity, and c) materialize the representations and discourses about their past lives in Africa, and their present lives in Portugal according to the families’ present-day position in Portuguese society.

This discussion was structured by the following working hypotheses: a) material culture and consumption practices promote the expression of social identity, the display of social integration logics and positioning strategies, and the accumulation of material and immaterial resources, and contribute to the narratives about life trajectories and experiences, as well as reality and life perceptions; b) homes, being formed by material and symbolic dimensions imbued with present and past experiences, can be addressed as contexts for the materialization of family memories; c) migration experiences are a particular form of mobility that entails disintegration (at origin) and reintegration (upon arrival), which must be examined as multifaceted processes that manifest themselves in multiple ways.

The ethnography included ten families equally distributed between the two groups under analysis and selected according to a snowball logic (Burgess 1997; Finnegan 1997). Fieldwork relied on multiple techniques for collecting and processing information. In fact, the diversity of material domains is enormous, which makes the indiscriminate application of a general model of analysis untenable. As Miller argues (1998a,b), in a home observations and discussions are possible to, within an hour, move from furniture to decorative objects, anxieties related to food or urban transport in