Territorial Environmental Conflicts and Cultural Production in Traditional Communities: A Look at Vernacular Architectures

Abstract

The way of building is a form of cultural production that expresses tangible and intangible societal values. For traditional peoples and communities, territories are the fundamental material base for their cultural reproduction. We know, however, that these populations are historically made vulnerable by territorial environmental conflicts that, many times, expel them from their places of belonging. What happens, then, when these cultural systems are subjected to processes of dispute? This is what we will investigate in this paper by analyzing ongoing conflicts in the north of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, from the vernacular architecture.