ABSTRACT
In general terms, kinsmen have an obligation to help one another so that when one Pisticcese wishes to impose on another, for example to introduce an inquisitive anthropologist, he tries to trace a kinship link; if this can be established, the imposition is excused, and some guarantee of good faith is given. Comparaggio is often introduced by ethnographers as a sort of pseudo-kinship. It is a relationship created between two pairs of adults, with reference usually to a child of one pair; they are godfathers in church, sponsors in a ritual which obliges them to oversee the ritual education and well-being of the child. A poor man will trace kinship with a remote rich man, while the latter may blow cool on the relation, in order to minimize the claims which may be made on him. He may not deny the kinship, but will give it greater remoteness than the poor man does. This is not invariably so.
