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basilicas and king posts: a proxemic and symbolic event analysis of competing public architecture among the San Blas Cuna
Author(s) -
MOORE ALEXANDER
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1981.8.2.02a00030
Subject(s) - proxemics , politics , architecture , mythology , history , sociology , law , political science , archaeology , communication , classics
The inauguration of a modern, syncretic, basilica‐style congress house in a Cuna community sparked an attempt to revive a traditional Cuna congress house. These complementary events are analyzed not only to reveal the political alliances behind this cultural oscillation, but to contrast the proxemics of the Western basilica (which elevates authority) with the Cuna congress house (which encloses and symbolizes authority). A further comparison of the congress house with all Cuna structures shows that the Cuna build only rectangular buildings. The significance of the rectangular‐round contrast, together with an analysis of myths used to launch the congress, discloses that traditional architecture expresses in metaphoric progression the structural replication of all Cuna political and domestic social structure, arrayed in multiple, serial, rank orders. [proxemics, event analysis, anthropology and architecture, mythology and symbolism, Circum‐Caribbean indigenous ethnology]