Political Belonging through Elderly Care

Autor(en)

Tatjana Thelen, Cati Coe

Abstrakt

In this article, we examine the ways that elderly care generates political belonging. Our approach builds on studies which argue that nurture and care create kinship, but takes that argument further by suggesting that care generates membership in numerous social formations, across scales. We suggest that elderly care helps illuminate key aspects of political belonging, particularly the temporality of political membership, because elderly care entails mutuality and reciprocity over a long period of time. In addition, elderly care is an interactive process in which older persons, their caregivers, the state and other actors negotiate modes of political belonging that entail affect as well as rights. Furthermore, elderly care has been used to construct representations of ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ families which are ideologically connected to particular political formations. These representations generate difference and ‘Othering’ of internal and external populations. Ultimately, we argue that a focus on elderly care collapses domains that are usually kept artificially separated, like kinship and the state, and private and public, in ways that are productive for social analysis as a whole.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie

Externe Organisation(en)

Rutgers University

Journal

Anthropological Theory

Band

19

Seiten

279-299

Anzahl der Seiten

21

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499617742833

Publikationsdatum

12-2017

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

504017 Kulturanthropologie, 504009 Ethnologie

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Anthropology, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/bdb033df-a4bb-435f-8f1d-b60ba87ca785