Proximity, interaction, and social organization in Lithuania

ENThe article discusses the ways in which Lithuanian people conceptualize social relations, prioritize one relationship over another, and transform one relationship into another, and how this is related to the aspects of social organization in Lithuania. The article focuses on ideas about family, kinship, and neighborhood that refer to different principles of relating and are inseparable from thinking about the nature of community and society, and suggests that the "spatial" sense and practice of proximity are influential factors of social ordering and of the ways people relate. It also shows that a "house," or in the case of Lithuania, a "homestead," is an institution that encompasses and localizes the physical proximity of the social and is significant in thinking about family, kinship, and neighborhood, as well as the constitution of group, community, and society in Lithuania.