Philip Y. Kao PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

family represents where one comes from, and relates to who can (and should) ask for
and provide care.
This chapter then is also an attempt to investigate how kinship in the context of LTCs
comes alive. Because of Schneider’s insights, we know better than to posit some kind of
natural or cultural grounding for locating the origins of caregiving (Schneider 1975,
1980, 1984). Who you care for and who cares for you might well say something about
one’s kin relations, but it does not make much sense to ask whether or not kinship
operationalizes care or how kin-based societies provide enduring care. There is the risk
here of reifying concepts. What can be asked, however, is how do people conceptualize
caregiving and kinship, together and separately, so that what arises is a social and
theoretical space that allows for various practices and meanings. Schneider did address
the older agent when he was collecting data on kinship genealogies. In an earlier study,
he mentions that the “[…] Image of old folks sitting around doing nothing but counting
kin and dwelling on relatives does not gather much support for our [genealogical] study”
(Schneider and Cottrell 1975, 99). Despite Schneider’s questioning of kinship, he
recognised that it could function as a last resort for securing care especially in old age.
But this is not always necessarily true. What is missing is an account of how older people
come to establish new relations, and how care for the elderly in contemporary western
societies is negotiated through the evolving forms and changing character of kinship
relations. Too much of kinship studies is focused on procreation, and on filiation and
descent: i.e. whom do children belong to and how do they relate to other children and
family members in their respective consanguineal and affinal networked universe. To be
fair, Christine Fry addresses how caregiving and the meaning of kinship have been
changing in industrialised societies. These changes are linked to the labour and
consumer marketplace. For Fry, “The care work of kin is contingent on these two
markets. To participate in these markets, families have responded by having fewer
children, by emphasizing bilateral descent with neolocal residence” (Fry 2003, 331). Fry
says, “With affluence, elders and their families may find supportive environments and
care in a wide variety of alternative residential arrangements ranging from retirement
communities with recreational amenities to assisted living and nursing homes” (Fry
2003, 331). This is underscored by the fact that the service sector in the American
economy has been expanding to include caregiving (which involves assistance with the
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