Current Research Projects 

1. Vulnerable childhoods in current multi-crisis contexts: institutional mechanisms, family resources and community coping strategies. (AFRONTA). PID2022-139502OB-I00).

Jordi Grau Rebollo (IP), Anna Piella Vila, Aurora González Echevarría, María Valdés Gázquez, Nicolás Lorite García, Irina Casado Aijón, Lucía Sanjuan Núñez, Beatriz García García, Lourdes García Tugas (UOC), Miryam Navarro Rupérez, Clara Guzmán Vilaboy, Jaume García Hernández, Amina Coucous, Sandra Castillejos Raluy.

This project is aligned with goals 1 (targets 1.3. and 1.5.) and 10 (targets 10.2 and 10.3) of the Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda for Sustainable Development, EU 2030) and aims to move towards the search for solutions to the challenges of society presented by the consequences they have on vulnerable families and in particular on the upbringing of their children: (a) the concurrence of various crises (economic, energy, environmental, health and information reliability), (b) the possible chronicity of structural conditions of inequality, as well as the emergence of supervening circumstances that aggravate their vulnerability, (c) the existence of gaps and barriers of various kinds (socio-technological and resource, gender or digital, in addition to those that impose an inadequate understanding -and consequent management- of diversity and the obstacles resulting from insufficient technological and informational competence in relations with entities and administrations that are potential providers of welfare).

2. VulneraS Project: Childrearing, Abandonment and Sociocultural Vulnerability. Situational Analysis and Intervention Proposals. (CSO2017-83101-C2-1-R).

Anna Piella Vila (IP),  Jordi Grau Rebollo (IP), Aurora González Echevarría, María Valdés Gázquez, Nicolás Lorite García, Irina Casado Aijón, Lucía Sanjuan Núñez, Beatriz García García, Sarah Lázareh Boix, Eva Bretones Peregrina,  Lourdes García Tugas (UOC), Carmen de Jesús García García (University of Granada). Assistant ethnographers: Miryam Navarro Rupérez and Clara Guzmán Vilaboy

MAIN RESULTS:

  • The critical analysis of the genealogy and the disciplinary and interdisciplinary uses of concepts such as “vulnerability” or “vulnerable”, which made it possible to differentiate four different types of vulnerability (biological, psychological, social and symbolic) and to establish a relationship of specific situations of vulnerability that affect agents and parental structures that manifest themselves in contexts of upbringing, which provides a framework of analysis that allows the identification of situations of risk and make it easier for them to cope.
  • To propose an alternative to indicators, based on the generalization of ethnographed experiences of vulnerability. Identify indicators of vulnerability in specific ethnographic contexts that, from specific ethnographic constructions, can be extended to other research contexts through successive comparisons.
  • Detect supervening factors of vulnerability triggered in the course of institutional interventions or by specific confluences of certain less visible risk indicators.
  • Delineate coping resources and cooperation strategies in areas of parenting among particularly vulnerable groups, both in terms of formal and informal support. Detection and identification of social reconfigurations of informal support in the pandemic context.
  • Design training actions (audiovisual materials, workshops), informative (scientific documentary) and awareness-raising (advertising campaign), with a transformative vocation, integrating academic and professional strata.

3. Kinship: Forms of Parenting and Disciplinary Joints. (CSO2012-39041-C02-01). (2013-2016) (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness).
Anna Piella Vila (IP), Aurora González Echevarría, Jordi Grau, María Valdés, Virginia Fons, Carme Parramón, Júlia Vich, Irina Casado, Sarah Lázare, Meritxell Sáez, Gloria Urtasun, Aurelio Díaz, Lucía Sanjuan, Eva Bretones, Oscar López. External researchers: Carmen García (UGR), Elixabete Imaz (UPV-EHU), Lourdes García (IGenus Foundation). Research Advisors: Margarita Lagarde (UNAM, Mexico), Teresa del Valle (UPV-EHU), Teresa San Román (UAB).

MAIN RESULTS:

  1. To establish the uses of the concept of parenting and propose a definition of parenting, as well as analyze the different general elements of the domain of kinship underlying some of the current ways of exercising parenting (child movement, translocal parenting, shared parenting by relatives with or without descendants, identity uses of parenting).
  2. To contribute to the study of the intersections of the domains of Anthropology referring to: kinship and health, kinship and education and, kinship and gender (concept of person and body and maternal and child health, articulations between educational institutions and conceptualizations of parenting, gender configurations in certain parental figures).
  3. To advance in the study of interdisciplinary intersections between Anthropology and Medicine (sexual and reproductive health), Biology and Anthropology (sex / gender systems and kinship systems) and, Biology, Anthropology, Psychology and Psychoanalysis (forms of parenting).

Coordinated project of the getp-GRAFO with the GIAS Research Group of the Public University of Navarra, UPNA (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) CSO2012-39041-C02-00 (2013-2016), ‘Parenting. Anthropological Approaches and Interdisciplinary Connections’. Anna Piella Vila, IP Coord. The members mentioned in the previous project are joined by José M. Uribe (IP of the GIAS project), Paloma Fernández Rasines and Mercedes Bogino.

4. Cross-cultural theory of human group reproduction. The Anthropology of kinship as a study of the sociocultural models of procreation and parenting. (SEJ2006-10864). 2006-2010. Aurora González Echevarría (IP), Anna Piella, Jordi Grau, Dan rodriguez, Hugo Valenzuela, Virginia Fons, María Valdés, Pepi Soto, Irina Casado, Carmen Parramón, Teresa San Román, Aurora Reparato, Gustavo Indurain (FPU Fellow) and Júlia Vich (FPI Fellow).
RESULTS:

  • Development of a proposal to define the domain of Kinship Anthropology. It starts from the critique of a lax use of the term kinship, clearly differentiating its theoretical meaning as a domain of the Anthropology of Kinship and its folk use, as a concept of Western culture: “The domain of the ‘Anthropology of Kinship would be constituted by sociocultural phenomena as, and only while, we see them from the perspective of the replacement of human beings who make up a group through the conceptualization and regulation of the generation, circulation and care of boys and girls, the attribution of the ultimate responsibility for their socialization and enculturation to social maturity and the relationships that are created and institutionalized in the processes of procreative reproduction and develop throughout their lives. “
  • Development of a detailed script for taking ethnographic data on the items that make up the domain of Kinship Anthropology. Script that has already been used in different fieldwork.
  • Development of ethnographic and procreative models (ndowé of Equatorial Guinea, dyirbal of Australia, native Norwegian urban population, Malay fishing population of Pulau Tuba and immigrant populations in Catalonia: Pakistanis, Amazigh, Romanians, Roma and Dominicans. Procreational model of Chinese immigrants in Canada, a paradigmatic case of translocal kinship.

The domain definition results have been published in González Echevarría et al. (2010), González Echevarría (2010, 2011) and M. Valdés Gázquez (2011). The construction of ethnographic and comparative models has been collected in J. Grau, H. Valenzuela and D. Rodríguez (2011).

5. The theoretical cross-cultural domain of procreation. Conception of the person, control of sexuality, organization of reproduction, parenting and configuration of models. (BSO2000-0478). 2000-2003. Aurora González Echevarría (IP), Anna Piella, Jordi Grau, Dan Rodríguez, Hugo Valenzuela (FPI Fellow).
RESULTS: Epistemological and methodological foundations of the theoretical cross-cultural domain of procreation. Fieldwork in Barcelona (adoptive families), Australia (continuities and changes in Aboriginal kinship in Jambun, Queensland), Catalonia and Gambia (inbreeding, exogamy and interethnic relations between Senegambian immigrants in Catalonia and their families of origin) and Malaysia (technological innovation and kinship relations on the island of Pulau Tuba).
 
6. Towards an Anthropology of Procreation. (DGICYT PS94-0115). 1995-98. A. González Echevarría (IP), A. Piella. J.Grau (FPI).
RESULTS: Comparative work with HRAF and Research on scientific and hermeneutic methods in Anthropology. Bibliographic work on the anthropological approach to kinship relations and ethnic identity in the case of Australian Aborigines. Analysis of the insertion of audiovisual media in anthropological research using kinship as a substantive reference.