House to palace, village to state: Scaling up architecture and ideology

It would seem desirable for any state to gain an ideological foothold in lo cal knowledge and symbols to facilitate the assimilation of its order by av erage citizens and to argue for its legitimacy. However, given the "lived r eality" of local knowledge and its practical and symbolic "efficacy," as gu aranteed in part through the skills of ritual specialists not in the servic e of the state, the introduction and maintenance of state ideology is neith er an issue of facile appropriation of local symbols nor a straightforward imposition on local knowledge. The complexity of the architectural and ideo logical scaling up from traditional house to "palace" and polity are discus sed for nineteenth-century Imerina, Madagascar, using ethnohistorical, arch aeological, and ethnographic information. We attempt to present this argume nt through the use of evocative concrete imagery, one stylistic aspect of l ocal knowledge, rather than through an exclusive use of analytical, abstrac t declarations.