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Kinship, Love, and Life Cycle in Contemporary Havana, Cuba

To Not Die Alone

Palgrave Macmillan

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
  2. Kinship as an Idiom for Social Relations

    • Heidi Härkönen
    Pages 27-49
  3. Old Age, Funerals, and Death: Reciprocating Care

    • Heidi Härkönen
    Pages 147-187
  4. The State as Family

    • Heidi Härkönen
    Pages 189-220
  5. Conclusion: Time, Care, and Kinship

    • Heidi Härkönen
    Pages 221-227
  6. Back Matter

    Pages 229-247

About this book

Kinship, Love, and Life Cycle in Contemporary Havana, Cuba is an ethnographic analysis of gender, kinship, and love in contemporary Cuba. The book documents how low-income Havana residents negotiate their social relations through gendered caring practices over the life cycle from birth to death.

Reviews

“Härkönen has provided readers with a comprehensive survey of life-cycle rituals that is sophisticated in showing how rules of reciprocity in Cuban kinship have changed over the life cycle, in history, and vary between genders. … an important contribution to the anthropology of Socialism, exposing readers to another example of the diverse cultural practices that have flourished in post-Socialist societies. … will be of particular interest to gender studies, post-Socialist studies, and Cuban, Latin American and Caribbean area studies researchers.” (Hope Bastian, Social Anthropology - Anthropologie Sociale, August, 2017)

"In this masterful ethnography, Heidi Härkönen weaves together discussions of the material conditions of post-Soviet era Cuba, critical moments in life such as coming of age, having children, and dying, and personal stories of kinship, love, and caring. In so doing, this book offers new perspectives on the issues of political economy, matrifocality and gender in the Caribbean, while relating these issues to global transformations of postcolonialism and postsocialism." - Kevin Birth, Professor of Anthropology at Queen's College, CUNY, USA and author of Objects of Time: How Things Shape Temporality

Authors and Affiliations

  • Helsinki, Finland

    Heidi Härkönen

About the author

Heidi Härkönen gained her PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology in the University of Helsinki, Finland, in 2014. She has been Visiting Research Scholar at the City University of New York Graduate Center, USA, and Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Kinship, Love, and Life Cycle in Contemporary Havana, Cuba

  • Book Subtitle: To Not Die Alone

  • Authors: Heidi Härkönen

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58076-4

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York

  • eBook Packages: Education, Education (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-58075-7Published: 21 April 2016

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-58076-4Published: 21 April 2016

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVII, 247

  • Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations, 4 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Social Anthropology, Gender Studies

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access