CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Digital.CSIC The Becoming of Space: A Geography of Liminal Practices of the City of Antofagasta, Chile Alberto Corsin Jimenez St Antony’s College Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography in compliance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) of the University of Oxford Hilary Term, 2001 1 The Becoming of Space: A Geography of Liminal Practices of the City of Antofagasta, Chile Alberto Corsín Jiménez St Antony´s College Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography in compliance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) of the University of Oxford Hilary Term, 2001 ABSTRACT In this thesis I endorse and put forward the idea that space is a practical category; that is, not a place or setting where we stand and do things, not even - or not solely - somewhere that can be variously signified by our actions and therefore symbolically constructed or evoked, but an action itself. Space, I contend, is something that we do or that other people or even things do. The argument that I hold is that we create spaces as we cope with the world that we live in. Our act of ‘coping’ is a spatial act, a mode of comportment through which we lay out what we want or do not want to do with and in the world. Space is but another mode of expressing agency, another way to bestow, obtain or elicit meanings from the world. In this context, I prefer to speak of space as a capacity: an instrument and idiom that we use to obtain things. This quality of space brings forth and illuminates its inherent political dimension. I support this reading of space on an ethnographic account of the dimensions through which urban space in the Chilean city of Antofagasta is constructed; specifically, the socio-spatial rhythms through which ideas about the house, the street and certain landscapes of consumption - a high street, a number of supermarkets, a shopping centre, a boulevard, a street market - are given social form. The ethnography shows the local people to refer their spatiality to the flow of social relationships and not to the material setting of the places they occupy (people talking of doing things somewhere rather than going somewhere to do something). My argument is that, in this light, space, far from a transparent medium, becomes the idiom or dimension through which certain people effect their agency 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Over the time that it has taken me to produce and write this thesis I have amassed a number of debts that I want to give credit to. Of these, perhaps the most outstanding is the debt I owe to Professor Peter Riviére, my supervisor at Oxford. He has taught me many things during my time at Oxford, but perhaps the one I am most grateful for is the ability, that I now find not so common, to think clearly and to look for the words that may allow such thoughts to come through with equal clarity. I do not think I have yet managed to express myself with the clarity of his teachings but the most I can say is that I am trying and that I now treasure this disposition as dearly as any other of my anthropological training. I am also very grateful to Professor Riviére for subtlety domesticating my inclination towards grand theory. I have learned from him the importance of ethnography. This may sound simple but it took me a long time to realise that it was not. I can say the same for Dr. Marcus Banks, who has been my internal examiner all the way through my doctoral progression. He and Dr. Chris Gosden, in the course of an illuminating Confirmation viva, made me realise that I had to spell out my knowledge of Antofagasta by making it explicit, by opening it up to and with ethnography. In Antofagasta I am grateful to just too many people to pay due acknowledgements to them all. For their friendship, hospitality and assistance, I thank Professor Alejandro Bustos Cortés and her wife, María Eugenia Vargas. Their support at all times during my stay in Antofagasta has been extraordinary, and my research and my work would have been very different had they not been there. I am very grateful also to the late Professor Juan Panadés, former dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences and Education of the University of Antofagasta. He made my stay in Antofagasta possible in the first place by allowing my affiliation to the university’s Institute for Research in Anthropology. More importantly, as a leading regional historian his knowledge of the city and the desert provided me with many a one insights on Antofagasta’s past. It is with great sadness and fondness that I remember our conversations in his office. To another leading regional historian, Professor José Antonio González Pizarro, I am equally grateful. He supplied me with copies of many of his works and invited me to the First International Congress on History and Heritage, organized by the Universidad Católica del Norte on November 1999. To the many participants and attendants to the 3 congress I am thankful for their commentaries. In the same line, I want to acknowledge my express gratitude to Luis Toledo Vilca, Director of Research at the Universidad José Santos Ossa, who invited me to talk about my research at an Open Lecture thereby allowing me to present my work to and benefit from the commentaries of faculty and students whose views I might otherwise not have had the chance to engage with. I am also particularly grateful to Dr. Rolando Meneses, of the School of Architecture of the Universidad Católica del Norte, and María Antonieta Moya, of the School of Social Work of the Universidad José Santos Ossa. In offering me teaching posts within their respective schools they showed a confidence in my work that I am most thankful for and they enabled me to be in touch with different groups of students whose insights into the life of the city proved extremely valuable. To them all, many thanks. Amongst my other debts are those I owe to present and past fellow doctoral students at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Oxford. I am thinking, in particular, of Goran Janev, Luis Batalha and Mette Berg. I am also thinking of the participants of the Postgraduate Workshops Series, whose very recent creation has not prevented it from becoming an open and stimulating forum for debate and intellectual exchange. To Mauricio Carradini I am thankful for his friendship during the final push and for helping me out with the maps. I gratefully acknowledge the support of a Peter Lienhardt Memorial Fund Studentship, and grants from the Interfaculty Committee for Latin American Studies and the Graduate Studies Committee, all of the University of Oxford. I am also thankful to St Antony’s College, Oxford, for two minor bursaries. María Such has read different parts of the thesis and has animated me in my search for clarity. There is, also, a lot that she has taught me through our many discussions and conversations, particularly in regard of how to make an argument sound coherent and sensible. My work and habit of mind owe a lot to her. Finally I want to thank my family. Without the support and encouragement of my parents there is simply no way I could have got here. They have put up with far too many things, and it is their courage and perseverance, not mine, that have enabled me to come all this way. This work is therefore, in no small measure, their own. It is to them that I dedicate it. CONTENTS 4 Abstract Acknowledgements i Contents iii List of Tables vii Introduction 1 The Setting 2 An Ethnography of Space and the Space of the Ethnography 3 Getting a Hold on Space 6 The Findings 8 1. One Hundred and Forty Years of Frontier Urbanization 14 1.1 Birth of a Frontier Town 15 1.2 ‘Working Out’ Frontier Space 19 Labour 20 The Church and Capital 29 1.3 1930-1990s: The Urbanization of the Frontier 37 The State 38 The Literature 52 1.4 Conclusion 58 2. The World’s Mining Capital 62 2.1 The Social Structure of a Frontier Society 63 2.2 Economy 71 2.3 Culture and the Politics of Identity 78 2.4 Modernity and History 85 5 2.5 Conclusion 98 3. Theories on Space 102 3.1 A (Very) Brief History of Space 104 3.2 Social Space 109 Durkheim and the Anthropology of Space 110 Geography (and Others) 122 3.3 Conclusion 132 4. Rhythmic Spaces and the Rhythm of Space 139 4.1 Spatializing an Imaginary City 140 4.2 Mapping the Work Fields (of Fieldwork) 144 Valdivia 147 Gran Vía 154 Norte 167 4.3 ‘Nighthawking’ in Ruinas de Huanchaca 179 5. The Rituals of Space (I) 183 5.1 The Social Life of Streets 185 5.2 Calle Prat: A Spatial Place 190 5.3 Shopping Centres and the Centrality of Shopping 200 El Líder 202 5.4 Space as an Outing 218 Avenida del Brasil 218 La Feria del las Pulgas 224 6. The Rituals of Space (II) 232 6.1 Fiestas Patrias 232 6.2 All Saints’ Day 253 6 6.3 Conclusion 260 Conclusion 264 Appendix 270 Plates 271 Plate I a. Antofagasta: view of the south of the city Plate I b.