Антропологични теории за осиновяването
Anthropological Theories of Adoption

Summary/Abstract: The main concern of the article is theoretical — the author examines the mechanisms and role of the adoption as a social human instruction from anthropological point of view. Beginning from the distinction which brought the institution to life — between social and blood kinship, the article reveals the social mean of the transfer of parental rights. It reveals further the connection with the religious beliefs (cult of ancestors and their participation in the current life of the generations of kinsmen), and the rules of inheritance (the assumption of a name and a cult went with the inheritance of a land, whether the line was one of blood or of adoption). One of the aims of this article is to enquire into the broad social and historical context of the adoption. Because of limited knowledge of concrete material (there is still no attempt in the existing literature to do a systematic survey of the distribution of this phenomenon), the represented comparative data is less than comprehensive, which made the hypothetical reconstruction of some links and functions of the adoption throughout the history, the only possible way for conclusions. To identity the institution and its functions, the author debates its place and role in the system of similar social phenomena, which have served sometimes and in some societies as an adoption's correlates — the levirate: the exchange of people between the groups — women, wives, children etc.; the polygamy and exogamy. For the complete revealing of the specifics of adoption, it should be looked at also in the context of other quasi-kinship relations such as fostering, wet-nursing, god-parenthood, ritual brotherhood, etc., which the author suggests to be the subject for further analysis and general conclusions.

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