Born to Age: The Industrialization of Eldercare and The Making of Aging Subjects in Urban China
| dc.contributor.advisor | Faubion, James | en_US |
| dc.creator | Wang, Yifan | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-08-09T16:42:56Z | en_US |
| dc.date.available | 2023-08-09T16:42:56Z | en_US |
| dc.date.created | 2023-05 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-04-21 | en_US |
| dc.date.submitted | May 2023 | en_US |
| dc.date.updated | 2023-08-09T16:42:56Z | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | If China’s over three decades of implementation of birth planning policies had sought to contain a crisis of overpopulation, today, as the global productivity epicenter, China is reconceptualizing the crisis as population aging. This sea change has culminated in China’s recent calls to industrialize eldercare in the face of diminishing family-based care provision. This industrialization is reshaping the eldercare landscape and giving rise to new care ethics, subject positions, and a mushrooming field of service and goods for consumption. My dissertation studies how aging has become a dominant way of describing and understanding life and the future in China today. On the one hand, it explores how this state-fostered and market-driven industry operates among the state’s population, welfare, and economic policies, market competitions, and ordinary people. On the other hand, it shows how people come to terms with aging differently through the mediation of the eldercare industry. This dissertation is primarily based on fieldwork at Gardenview, an eldercare company that runs several residential eldercare facilities in Nanjing and neighboring metropolitan cities, including Shanghai and Hangzhou. Between 2017 and 2020, I conducted a total of 14 months of fieldwork with Gardenview and at eldercare-themed exhibitions, summits, and forums. In addition, the dissertation is built on two archival research projects, with one examining how the concept of the population has been called upon in the Chinese Communist Party’s official discourses and the other tracing a series of welfare production exhibitions organized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1958. Drawing on diverse empirical and archival data, my dissertation elaborates on three overarching arguments. First, the industrialization of eldercare in China has transformed eldercare from a long-established family duty into a socioeconomic enterprise, configuring and reconfiguring the relationship between care ethics and market incentives. Second, the viability of this eldercare industry is further predicated upon a demographic sensibility—a collective and historically rehearsed feeling towards the population that the industry, in turn, actively recalibrates. Finally, the fostering of the eldercare market and the feeling of the population together create new aging subjects that fuel social and economic productivity through consumption. | en_US |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Wang, Yifan. "Born to Age: The Industrialization of Eldercare and The Making of Aging Subjects in Urban China." (2023) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/115109">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/115109</a>. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1911/115109 | en_US |
| dc.language.iso | eng | en_US |
| dc.rights | Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder. | en_US |
| dc.subject | China | en_US |
| dc.subject | Aging | en_US |
| dc.subject | Care | en_US |
| dc.subject | Work | en_US |
| dc.subject | Productivity | en_US |
| dc.subject | Consumption | en_US |
| dc.subject | Simulation | en_US |
| dc.subject | Exhibition | en_US |
| dc.title | Born to Age: The Industrialization of Eldercare and The Making of Aging Subjects in Urban China | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
| dc.type.material | Text | en_US |
| thesis.degree.department | Anthropology | en_US |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Social Sciences | en_US |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Rice University | en_US |
| thesis.degree.level | Doctoral | en_US |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy | en_US |
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