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

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.

• 1. Introduction: Bodies, Love, and Life in Urban Havana 2. Kinship as an Idiom for Social Relations 3. Fertility and Reproduction: Having a Child is Worth the Trouble4. Becoming a Woman: Quince as a Moment of Female Sexuality5. Love, Sexuality, and Adult Gender Relations: Nobody Likes Sleeping Alone6. Old Age, Funerals, and Death: Reciprocating Care 7. The State as FamilyConclusion: Time, Care, and Kinship

“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)