Kinship, Love, and Life cycle in contemporary Havana, Cuba: To not die alone

Abstract

This book is an ethnographic analysis of gender, kinship, and love in contemporary Cuba. The focus is on the lives of low-income Havana residents over the life cycle from birth to death. The book documents how kinship and love relations are created, reproduced, and negotiated at different life stages through gendered dialectics of care, important to both individuals’ relationships and state politics. In the process, through a variety of practices and meanings, ranging from rituals to understandings of sexual desire, gender becomes affirmed as the central social difference characterizing Cuban society. The book argues that Cubans live their lives embedded in social networks of care that are both emotionally and pragmatically central to individual existence. At the same time, the island’s contemporary political and economic changes carry gendered consequences to everyday relationships, with the potential to introduce unexpected changes to the life cycle.