Formation of Kinship Structures in the Community of San Miguel de Lajas, San José de Colinas, Santa Bárbara, Honduras

Abstract

This research aims to understand the ideas of family heads about the conformation of kinship structures in the community of San Miguel de Lajas. In this sense, a qualitative approach of an ethnographic type was used, with a descriptive scope and based on two epistemological perspectives: symbolic interactionism and hermeneutic phenomenology. The information was obtained through the development of semi-structured interviews with nineteen participants. The category on which the research focused was the conformation of kinship structures and four subcategories were defined: courtship, marriage, marital relations between cousins and cousins, and family roles; which were built in the process of information analysis, based on the grounded theory method. Among the findings, the existence of symbolic contents that give meaning to intersubjective representations about courtship and marriage stands out, as well as the normalization of relationships between cousins and cousins as an identity factor of kinship structures. The presence of the traditional model in the fulfillment of family roles is also evident, as well as the linear conception of time that maintains a tense relationship with the immediacy that emerges from the use of technology in the youngest people in the community.