26712 Funerals in Socialist Cuba
Heidi Härkönen^1
Introduction
My Cuban informants frequently maintained close loving bonds with
their mother throughout their lives, while contact with their father was
often highly sporadic. However, towards the end of a man’s life, the
relationship with his children may re-emerge, sometimes after years or
even decades of limited or no contact.
My ethnographic material on Cuba suggests that different points
of life cycle make distinct social relations emerge as important in vary-
ing ways. Those relations that are marginal in day-to-day contexts may
become more significant in other types of contexts. Life cycle rituals
can be seen to connect to such special moments, since in them the
social divisions that relevantly define kinship and other social exis-
tence often become especially visible (Barraud et al., 1994: 26, see also
- Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki, Finland; Heidi.Harko-
[email protected]