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

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Places like Grandma’s Place are not deceiving themselves in maintaining that their home
is some kind of idealized household of kin members. Grandma recognizes that her place
is first and foremost a business. Yet when people cannot find adequate care or even a
place to live in with their own family members, Grandma’s Place functions as a haven
where ageing persons can feel comfortable showing their vulnerabilities and debilities.
Engels’ idea of the productive bourgeois household gives way here to a new
commodified sanctuary, whereby people no longer able to produce in a capitalist
market, must pay their way out of the more traditional and familial household setting
(Engels 1972). There is much talk of love, tears, and emotions at Grandma’s Place so
much so that one wonders whether or not these things actually sustain a kind of
narrative that hides what is actually absent, that is caregiving which is not motivated
solely by market and economic transactions. It is quite paradoxical that families need to
be privatised, that is in the absence of seeking care in one’s own household, businesses
are literally making family homes. This is not just a matter of ‘Family Inc.,’ but of the
need to materialize certain ideologies (like the family) so that elders can continue
creating meaningful relations and transpersonal experiences.
The Tacoma Pastures Family
At Tacoma Pastures, it is important to get along with the residents, as well as fellow
caregivers and other staff members. The diverse workforce at Tacoma Pastures includes
nurses, med techs (those who have completed training and are certified to administer
medication), management staff, various hospice workers (caregivers themselves who
Tacoma Pastures outsource when certain residents require extra assistance) and various
speech and occupational therapists. The following ethnographic account will
demonstrate some of the tensions and conflicts that arise from caregiving on the ground
in a CCRC.
Sylvia is a Mexican-American young grandmother who is in her late thirties. When I first
started working as a caregiver, I spent my second day training with her. I shadowed her
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