Kinship, Love, and Life Cycle in Contemporary Havana, Cuba: To Not Die Alone

259 Pages·2016·2.52 MB·English

by  Heidi Härkönen (auth.)

Kinship, Love, & Life Cycle in
Contemporary Havana, Cuba
To Not Die Alone
Heidi Härkönen
Kinship, Love, and Life Cycle in Contemporary
Havana, Cuba: To Not Die Alone

Heidi   Härkönen
Kinship, Love, and
Life Cycle in
Contemporary
Havana, Cuba
To Not Die Alone
Heidi   Härkönen
Helsinki, Finland
ISBN 978-1-137-58075-7 ISBN 978-1-137-58076-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58076-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936508
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To my daughter Solana, the sunshine of my life.

P
REFACE
Large-scale historical formations such as liberal capitalism, socialism, and
post-socialism structure not only state policies and institutions, but they
also infl uence ordinary people’s intimate experiences of love and family
life. Such abstract ideological formations materialize and take shape only
through the everyday lives and social worlds of the people who live under
these particular historical conditions. At the same time, individuals mold the
form that political and economic confi gurations take on the ground.
The 1959 Cuban revolution was one of world’s largest social experi-
ments in the pursuit of creating a new society and new men capable of
advancing the nation toward a socialist future. By a thorough reformation
of the country’s politics and economics, the revolutionary government
also sought to install social transformations that would shape profoundly
not only work, housing, education, and health, but also individuals’ fam-
ily, love, and sexual relations and core understandings of their bodies and
personhood. Indeed, Cubans’ entire life course was to be marked by the
revolutionary egalitarianism pursued by Fidel Castro: the state was to take
care of the individual from cradle to grave whereas people, on their behalf,
were to dedicate their lives to the construction of a socialist society.
While over the years, the Cuban revolution has faced diverse problems
and its policies have changed, the collapse of the Soviet Union—Cuba’s
greatest political and economic ally—launched the island into an unparal-
leled political and economic crisis that called for a drastic restructuring of
the society. The aftermath of this crisis still shapes Cubans’ lives today, as
vii
viii PREFACE
the country continues to undergo rapid political, economic, and social
transformations that take place in an increasingly monetized and global-
ized society.
This book is an exploration into the ways in which ordinary Cubans
negotiate their life projects, family relations, love, and care in this pre-
carious and unpredictable political, economic, and social context. The
book follows not only how Cubans handle the post-Soviet era structural
changes, but also how they draw on cultural and historical continuities to
make sense of their lives. The focus is on the interplay between state poli-
cies and ordinary Cubans’ kinship and gender relations over the individual
life cycle from pregnancy to the afterlife.
Over the life course, Cubans reproduce and negotiate both their social
relations and their understanding of state policies through reciprocal car-
ing practices that vary over time. Care is different at diverse points of the
life cycle: a baby needs different care than an adult. Care is gendered: men
and women face different needs and expectations of care over their life
course. Care also varies historically: it is not the same to grow old dur-
ing the years of strong state support systems than during the post-Soviet
crisis. To understand this presence and absence of care in Cubans’ rela-
tionships at different points of their lives, I use the concept of d ialectics of
care . Dialectics of care allows me to address simultaneously the variation
in individuals’ relationships and in state policies both over the individual
life cycle from birth to death and historically over time.
To approach social life in Cuba, I draw on 14 months of ethno-
graphic research among low-income, racially mixed H abaneros (residents
of Havana). Since 2003, I have become intimately acquainted with the
desires, troubles, fears, and dreams in these Cubans’ lives. Ethnography
always relies on the specifi c relationships that a researcher is able to forge
on the ground: both the personality of the researcher and those of the
people she encounters shape the understandings that are created in such
interaction. This research thus arises from a specifi c social and cultural
context over particular historical moments. The arguments I present
should not be understood as generalizations applicable to the country as a
whole; my use of the word “Cubans” is fi rmly anchored in the perspective
offered by my ethnography. At the same time, the events and occurrences
in my interlocutors’ lives provide an empirically situated point of view
into understanding cultural and historical dynamics that have signifi cance
beyond the immediate context of this research. People in diverse parts
of the world need to refashion their day-to-day caring relations due to
PREFACE ix
structural developments. How Cubans make sense of their lives and their
personal dramas of love and death in the midst of the post-Soviet political
and economic turmoil by drawing on gendered and dialectically trans-
forming practices of care, bring insights into the interaction among kin-
ship, love, state policies, and time also in other contexts.
Helsinki, Finland, 2015 H eidi   Härkönen