Tihana Rubic Current Project Tihana Rubic Curriculum Vitae Current Project Tihana Rubic's research is focusing in particular on cultural anthropological interpretation of role of kinship and family in urban and rural settings, in 20th century (notably, second half) in Croatia. The research and the analysis are dealing with everyday patterns, praxis and values attached to family life, social security, family assistance, rituals, rules and expectations. The research will be cultural anthropological and ethnological analysis and interpretation of role of kinship and family, which will primarily deal with overlapping and ambivalences of patterns, praxes and values attached to family life, social security, family assistance, rituals, rules and expectations. Focus will be (contextually and diachronically) directed to the periods of socialism and post socialism in Croatia and (thematically) on a social, practical and symbolical, role of kinship and family in one's life. The goal is to investigate and discuss social and kin relations and structures and their changing processes. In this way individuals, families and kin groups will be investigate mainly through their social roles, and culture and social phenomena will be perceived and treated as constantly changing processes. The research will partly rely on theoretical, archival and historical research, but also ethnological and anthropological field work (participant observation, narrative and quantitative interviews). Analysis shall be done further on the base of a large number of case-studies, mostly concerning every day family life and praxis, but also ceremonial family gatherings, reciprocity of (intergenerational) help, family values, family roles and social and family patterns in the socialist and post socialist period in Croatia, as diverse political and social backgrounds.

Large scale of data was already partly collected in the urban setting (Zagreb, Croatia) through the nine-month field research on kinship and social security (during 2005), in the frame of the interdisciplinary project with anthropological agenda: KASS - Kinship and Social Security (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Salle, Germany). Family and kinship relationships in our society have traditionally been based on connections among persons tied by blood or marriage. Although in praxis the forms of family have changed (notably, divorces, unmarried couples, homosexual couples, etc.), the impression is (through interviews done until now) that people are still trying to fit the "traditional" models of the two-(man and woman) parent nuclear family, interpreted and valuated as "natural" and "right" one. Such ambivalences of individual praxis and common values are the main focus of the analysis The topic has not been systematically explored and discussed, by using ethnological or cultural anthropological analysis and interpretation, in Croatia yet. Data sources, such as censuses and surveys, do not offer enough details about kinship networks. Ethnographic fieldwork, through narrations, could offer more insights into experiences and values in the past and presence.