养老带来政治归属:时间维度、表征形式以及相互性

Political Belonging Through Elderly Care:Temporalities,Representations and Mutuality

本文试图从社会人类学的"抚养和照顾造就亲属关系"这一基本立场出发,以养老问题为切入点,考察和分析养老与政治归属的关联。我们认为,抚养和照顾形成了不同社会构成中的成员身份,其范围大小不一;养老安排需要长期的相互性以及回馈式行为,这有助于揭示政治归属的关键方面,尤其是成员身份的时间维度。此外,政治归属既包含情感也包含权利因素,养老作为互动过程,老人、赡养者和护理者、国家以及其他行动主体需要对此进行协商;养老理念也体现了一个社会对自身以及"他者"的想象和理解。因此,我们认为,从养老入手的跨学科研究可以打通一些人为划分的领域,比如,亲属与国家,私人与公共,这有利于将社会作为一个整体来进行分析,在实践上和理论上都有意义。

In this article,we examine the ways elder 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 elder care helps illuminate key aspects of political belonging,particularly the temporality of political membership,because elder care entails mutuality and reciprocity over a long period of time.In addition,elder care is an interactive process in which older persons,their caregivers,the stata,and other actors negotiate modes of political belonging that entail affect as well as rights.Furthermore,elder 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 elder care collapses domains usually kept artificially separated,like kinship and the state,and private and public,in ways that are productive for social analysis as a whole.