ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Andean kinship practices, arguing that powerful connections and alliances are created through everyday domestic activities, companionship, and movement between households. Andean social groups are often extensive and interdependent, and kinship practices generally serve to broaden networks of relations rather than to narrow them, and to nourish connections rather than sever them. The chapter highlights three general features observable in Andean kinship practices. First, relatedness in the region is considered bilateral, meaning that relatives on both the father’s and the mother’s side “count” equally and connections with extended kin are often highly legible. Andean kinship is also said to be characterized by reciprocity, in the sense of regularized exchange and flow. Furthermore, it has a temporal dimension, in that it is observably produced through repeated interactions over time. The chapter examines these three features in three interconnected case studies: compadrazgo or co-parenthood, houses and households, and child circulation.
