Historical development and emergent legality: symbolic spatiality in Santa Maria, Catamarca, (Argentina)

Abstract

In this article I explore the categories of otherness and space discontinuities in the cemeteries in the towns of Santa María, Lampacito and San José, in Santa María Department, Catamarca, Argentina, as a result of historical development and innovations in the Christian normative. Emphasizing on the articulations in the social practice, sociological categories and dead taxonomies, I analyze the way how the recent space homogenization is understood in terms of alliances between sectors holding the local power in a context wherein many people see themselves receiving unequal treatment from the Church. Therefore, I propose the existence of a connection quite relational rather than absolute between representations about the living and dead societies. In this work two types of sources are related: my own ethnography and the versions of the Code of Canon Law edited in 1917 and 1983.