The tools of the trade: The materiality of architecture in the patrimonialization of ‘Arab houses’ in Damascus

Abstract

The ethnographic study of architecture shows that building and restoring practices play an active part in the construction of the social groups that carry them out. ‘Proper’ practices and concepts of heritage distinguish ‘authentic’ from ‘inauthentic’ inhabitants of Damascus Old Town. Heritage development is therefore an act of culturally meaningful engagement through which an arena for confrontation and argument about the ‘production of the space’ is constituted. Focusing on the dynamic interrelationship of material, social and symbolic aspects of architecture, the author examines the agency and materiality of Arab houses as objects in a mutual relationship with people who build, restore, buy, sell and dwell in them. Getting involved in the material activities and engaging in relationships between the different social actors in this arena allows the intrusive ethnographic glance to grasp the cultural meaning of architecture, not simply as a symbolic representation of people who own, build and restore houses, but as a constitutive element of their sense of identity, belonging and distinction.