El parentesco ficticio entre América Latina y Europa: estrategias de respuesta a la desparentalización en perspectiva comparada

Contemporary societies are coping in different ways with the declining strength of kinship and other effects of demographic transitions such as a shift from nuclear to “unclear” family forms and population ageing. One strategy consists in widening and reshaping existing ties through modes of relatedness that come under the heading of “fictive kinship”. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the transformation of the compadrazgo system in Quito (Ecuador), this article considers fictive kinship in comparative perspective, paying attention to its novel fashions but also to changes and continuities in its traditional forms.