Consanguinity, alliance, godparenthood, and adoption. A procesual approach to the kinship system in Andean Ecuador

Abstract (English)

This paper proposes a reflection on the Andean kinship system from a processual perspective, with the aim of defining the principles through which relationships that can be defined as kinship are created. Research conducted on the Andean cultural area has demonstrated significant heterogeneity in the manifestation of kinship (Bolton & Mayer 1977; Sendón 2012; Weismantel & Wilhoit 2019). Although consanguinity and alliance appear to be the basis of kinship networks, numerous studies reveal how networks are also integrated by so-called spiritual relatives, who are godparents, godchildren and “compadres”, and by adopted children (Arnold 1998; Leinaweaver 2008; Van Vleet 2008, Salas Carreño 2019). A wide variety of people can be integrated into the kinship network through rituals or processes of cohabitation. In all cases, this process entails the active involvement of the individuals implicated in the dynamics of reciprocity and obligation that underlie kinship (Weismantel 1995). The processual idea of reciprocity appears to be the principle that guides the construction of the system, beyond the morphologies that characterise it. Based on the results of anthropological studies carried out in the Andes and my ethnographic research with indigenous kichwa-speaking and mestizo populations in the Ecuadorian Andes, this paper therefore questions how to define the Andean kinship system. My study draws upon a perspective developed by research conducted on southern Europe and the Mediterranean (Viazzo and González Díez 2016; Micheli 2021), proposing a processual approach that prioritises the manner in which families are constituted over the forms of the familial units that are created. The paper therefore proposes to define Andean kinship based on its capacity to create bonds centered on reciprocity and obligations, involving people with very different statuses but related in the eyes of the people by the same conceptual substance.