Making family and kinship

weaving on families and kinship among calon gypsies

Abstract

The purpose of this article is a reflection on the notions of "making family," "being family," and "being kin" in the calon perspective. To this end, I make an empirical construction about the marriages among Brazilian calon families and how their configurations direct relations of descent and affinity when producing family and relatives in thec perspective. I sew the writing of this text in subsequent moments, in which, I write about the ceasing to be a child and the rites of marriages, and a case of separation between a calon marriage with a non-gypsy; later, I analyze the possibilities of marriages; and, I finish by writing about family networks and their importance in the procedural elaboration of the calon person in making himself or herself among 'family'. Hence, the importance of thinking about how marriages inscribe themselves in the lives of children. The data analyzed is part of a long-term research between the years 2013 and 2019, a time when I was ethnographically involved with calon family networks.