A syncretic approach to social housing : addressing challenges in social housing for Aboriginal communities in BC, Canada

• Main Author: Mpungu, Paul
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2010
• Subjects: Canada; First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/24459

Over thousands of years, the world's Indigenous peoples have developed their own distinct cultures, religions and economic and social organizations. Their ways of life are reflected in their architecture, and in their social and cultural lifestyles. Contact with European settlers interfered with the continuity and evolvement of their indigenous way of life. Many First Nations in Canada are at advanced stages in their treaty negotiations with the Federal government. This study focuses on three interrelated paradigms which, viewed together, impact the delivery of architectural forms in built environments. These include education, professional practice and social housing. Social housing as a critical model of housing that has achieved global appeal was instrumental in the acculturation processes that characterized colonial tendencies of post-contact Canada. This thesis explores these paradigms from the point of view of post-colonialism in the power contestations that continue to this day. The realization of a culturally appropriate social housing environment is the ultimate dream of many Aboriginal people. It has remained central in the minds of most Aboriginals to the extent that it is seen to hold the key that would bring about a general improvement to their well-being. Hence my argument for an enabling environment mediated by Aboriginal agency, knowledge and implementation, as a prerequisite to achieving adequacy and socially appropriate housing for Aboriginal people. In a world that invariably equates Euro-centric hegemonic workings with globalization, cultural objectivity stands lowest in the technologically mediated modernization priority. But precisely because culture is itself the single most contested paradigm in global power relationships, this thesis identifies its mediating potential to prescribe a new future, one that is neither global nor nativist. That mediation is a virtual space invariably described as interstitial and or, as a space of liminality which, by following neither a global technopole nor an essentialist position, becomes a third flow space. The thesis advances this third option in syncretism. Syncretic relations operate as symbiotic processes and tend to facilitate coexistence and constructive interaction between differing cultures. In their ability to mediate social housing differences, syncretic relations offer humanity a formidable opportunity to reconcile its cultural differences. Graduate