Kinship, Love, and Life Cycle in Contemporary Havana, Cuba is an ethnographic analysis of gender, kinship, and love in contemporary Cuba. The book documents how low-income Havana residents negotiate their social relations through gendered caring practices over the life cycle from birth to death.
"Härkönen has provided readers with a comprehensive survey of life-cycle rituals that is sophisticated in showing how rules of reciprocity in Cuban kinship have changed over the life cycle, in history, and vary between genders. ... an important contribution to the anthropology of Socialism, exposing readers to another example of the diverse cultural practices that have flourished in post-Socialist societies. ... will be of particular interest to gender studies, post-Socialist studies, and Cuban, Latin American and Caribbean area studies researchers." (Hope Bastian, Social Anthropology - Anthropologie Sociale, August, 2017)