Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.11.1.0117
• Pages: 117-119
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Daliany Jerónimo Kersh

BOOK REVIEWS 117

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

Heidi Härkönen, Kinship, Love, and Life Cycle in Contemporary Havana,

Cuba: To Not Die Alone (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), hb 247 pp.

ISBN: 9781137580757

Reviewed by Daliany Jerónimo Kersh1

Reciprocity, Härkönen convincingly argues, is influenced by historical events;

both by life cycle events and also by socio-economic transformations. Given the

relatively recent neo-liberal reforms and restructuring of society in the post-

Soviet era, Cuba makes a particularly interesting case study. This book therefore

would not only be of value to scholars and students interested in everyday life in

Cuban society but also to anthropologists and ethnographers focusing on kin-

ship and life cycle in general.

Kinship, Love, and Life Cycle demonstrates how kinship in a Cuban context

is not always forged by blood, but often formed through care, nurture and

shared life experiences such as for example, neighbours and godparents. Having

lived with a working-class family for fourteen months, Härkönen actually

assumes her own kinship status having been enmeshed in her social networks for

so long.

Throughout the study she insightfully describes both the pragmatism and

inventiveness that Cubans ascribe to their daily exchanges with each other over

various stages of their life cycles. Not only in terms of gifts, favours and nurtur-

ing but also in terms of the expectation that these are returned one day. Whereas

men are expected to provide materially, women are expected to provide nurtur-

ing care. Specific caring duties are therefore assigned according to gender. The

overall focus on gender rather than race is one of the strengths of this study as

the latter in my opinion has been over-examined. Moreover, by exploring life

cycles and kinship meanings for heterosexual males, this study also adds to exist-

ing post-Soviet gender studies, which thus far heavily focus on women and

homosexual men.

Whereas many scholars have discussed the ‘dollarised’ relationships between

Cubans and foreigners during the post-Soviet period, comparatively little atten-

tion has been given to daily practices and interactions between Cubans; I there-

fore think it was a bold move to conduct her research in a neighbourhood

without access to multinational kinship. Cubans forming relationships based on

both the exchange of sexuality and material means is a theme that runs through-

out the book, adding to the extensive literature on jineterismo. I similarly

1 Daliany Jerónimo Kersh is Assistant Professor in International History and International

Relations at Richmond, The American International University in London, UK.