| Summary: | This contribution seeks to put the concept of "European family system" to the test of the Spanish-American colonial context in the seventeenth century. The Spanish-American case distinguishes itself, in this matter, by a great diversity of situations, showing the coexistence of elite models in sharp contrast with those of other social groups. Faced with the centrality of the patrimonial question as the driving force of the alliance for the former, the more modest groups deploy indeed a great diversity of practices and grammars of the “kinning”. To "make a family" is thus socially conjugated process. This article questions the relevance of basing this divergence on the ethno cultural difference – i.e. the co-presence in colonial areas of European and extra-European models - and questions the very validity of the notion of model, both in the American and European context.
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