Социокултурно значение на родството в съвременността (стратегическо използване на родството в Средните Родопи, гр. Смолян)
The socio-cultural significance of kinship in the present (the strategical use of kinship in the Middle Rhodopes, the town of Smolyan)

Summary/Abstract: The paper traces the modern transformations in anthropological and sociological discourse on kinship in world and European scale. At the same time the author focuses on the development of the Bulgarian ethnological discourse on the topic. A contemporary European kinship model, based on a comparative study combining qualitative and quantitative methods, is presented as an example of the current understanding of the socio-cultural significance of kinship. In the empirical section of the paper an attempt is made for positioning a regional micro study on the strategical use of kinship in the framework of the general European model by combining quantitative (social network analysis) and qualitative methods (participant observation, interview, analysis of kinship trees). The specific analysis also reveals a few precise characteristics of family-kinship relations in the Middle Rhodopes, the town of Smolyan, pertaining to the parents-children relationship, the relationship between brothers and sisters and first cousins, relations with relatives from the maternal and paternal lines of decent, the role of different generations in maintaining kinship relations and the connection between the kinship group and other forms of cooperation.

• Details
• Contents