Browsing by Author "Siles, Catalina"

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    "I wanted to have a Christian family": Affinities Between Religiosity and Family Styles Among Catholics and Evangelicals in a Low-Income Neighborhood in Santiago
    (2023) Neckelmann, Maureen; Araos, Consuelo; Siles, Catalina
    This article explores the relationship between religiosity-as experiential and practical religious involvement-and family styles-as effective kinship expectations and configurations. We begin by identifying three gaps and one risk in the previous literature: excessive focus on (Evangelical) conversion; the paucity of comparative Catholic/Evangelical studies; the absence of an extended family and intergenerational approach; and, although to a lesser extent, a risk of conflation of the religious phenomenon. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews conducted in a low-income neighborhood in Santiago, we investigated native Catholic and Evangelical individuals and couples with similar levels of religiosity and socioeconomic status. We have observed two contrasting family styles. While among Catholics, we found a deep appreciation of intergenerational solidarity with a matrifocal bias, with a secondary importance on the marital relationship; among Evangelicals, we observed a strong conjugality and relative relegation of intergenerational relationships. We explore these results using the lens of "affinities" between religious and family spheres, close to Max Weber's classic concept of elective affinities. Evangelical religiosity produces solid boundaries with the secular world, including the influence of contextual family culture and non-nuclear kin, combined with an emphasis on individual autonomy and responsibility, which correlates with the notion of conjugality as an elective bond. Catholic religiosity is instead much more tolerant of the secular world, allowing a contextual family culture to permeate family configurations. The Catholic emphasis on Grace as an unconditional and gratuitous divine act, combined with popular devotion to Mary, reinforces the centrality of matrifocal intergenerational ties.
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    "Juntos pero no revueltos": Family residential dependence and care vulnerabilities along the life course
    (2021) Araos, Consuelo; Siles, Catalina
    In the study of family residential dependence, Latin American literature has focused on coresidence and explained its relationship with care vulnerability trajectories in terms of the survival strategies of the poor. This approach implies the hypothesis of a substitution mechanism between family and paid care. However, this represents an incomplete picture of residential dependence in this context. Based on the contributions of three theoretical approaches-residential proximity, family configurations, and life course-and data from an ethnographic study carried out in Santiago, Chile, between 2006 and 2015, we analyze the relationship between family residential dependence configurations and care among individuals belonging to professional middle- and upper-class kinship groups. First, we show that residential dependence may occur between non-coresident individuals, mainly through quasi-coresidence and recohabitation practices. This allows individuals to remain rooted in a multigenerational network of interdependence throughout the life course at all socioeconomic levels, what the interviewees in the study called the "together but not mixed" ideal. Second, although a significant part of the residential interdependence is articulated around daily intergenerational care practices, we propose an alternative explanatory model based on the redundancy hypothesis, where the family solution to care vulnerabilities is generally preferred even when non-family care alternatives are available. The relationship between family members' care needs and residential dependence mechanisms cannot be reduced to economic deficits or strategic responses. Such needs participate in a structure of care preferences linked to culturally defined kinship styles, where frequent co-presence solidarity predominates.