| Summary: | How does one become a master of the house, a man capable of controlling a kinship network and a family space? This article approaches the logic of power and authority in a tribal area of southern Jordan through its spatial and corporeal dimensions. It retraces a young man’s path to the status of adult man by examining—through the dialectical relationship between father and son—the process of learning how to manage the body and, more importantly, how to manage presence. From the ostentatious, troublesome presence of the shabb, to the controlled, level-headed presence of the adult man, the sometimes groping progression towards the age of adulthood is here synonymous with experimentation with an “art of being”: that of “inhabiting”, in the strict sense, the role of master of the house in the domestic space and beyond.
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