Altars of Hope: Venezuelan Domestic Workers and the Material Culture of the Divine

Pub Date : 2022-03-01 DOI:10.1353/bdl.2022.0002
Valentina Dávila
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Abstract

Abstract:Traditionally, and until recently, Venezuelan domestic workers lived in small bedrooms at the back of their employers' house, close to the kitchen and the laundry area. The room's location and austere material composition sought to divide the home into service and living areas and to limit the interaction between families and workers, leaving workers with deep feelings of isolation. For some domestic workers, praying for their families and for a better future helps mitigate feelings of loneliness. Thus, inside their assigned bedrooms, most workers set up sacred altars to channel and represent their faith and personalize their surroundings. Far from ornamentation or artistic pretension, each item in the altar is part of a meaningful composition meant to express the domestic worker's religious identity. Shrines act as a spiritual bridge connecting workers with their families and their gods, and ultimately easing their feelings of isolation.Once domestic workers move from the back of their employer's house into a home of their own, among their first actions is to erect one or more altars. Such material expression of religious belief assumes a predominant, unconstrained position in their new dwellings. This essay presents a comparative analysis that includes the altars in the workers' service bedrooms and later in their newly acquired homes. It seeks to understand how the material culture of the altars intersects with the built environment to dynamically represent the workers' yearnings, spiritual requests, goals, struggles, and dreams for the future.
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希望的祭坛:委内瑞拉家庭工人和神圣的物质文化
摘要:传统上,直到最近,委内瑞拉的家政工人都住在雇主房子后面的小卧室里,靠近厨房和洗衣区。房间的位置和简朴的材料构成试图将住宅划分为服务和生活区域,并限制家庭和工人之间的互动,让工人产生深深的孤立感。对一些家政工人来说,为家人和更好的未来祈祷有助于减轻孤独感。因此,在他们被分配的卧室里,大多数工人设立了神圣的祭坛,以引导和代表他们的信仰,并使他们的环境个性化。祭坛上的每一件物品都不是装饰,也不是艺术上的矫饰,而是一幅有意义的作品的一部分,意在表达家政工人的宗教身份。神社是连接工人与家人和神灵的精神桥梁,最终缓解了他们的孤独感。一旦家政工人从雇主的房子后面搬到自己的家里,他们的第一个动作就是竖立一个或多个祭坛。这种宗教信仰的物质表达在他们的新住所中占据了主导地位,不受限制。这篇文章提出了一个比较分析,包括祭坛在工人的服务卧室和后来在他们的新获得的家园。它试图理解祭坛的物质文化如何与建筑环境相交,以动态地表达工人对未来的渴望、精神要求、目标、奋斗和梦想。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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