Changes in Care

Aging, Migration, and Social Class in West Africa

By Cati Coe

SERIES: Global Perspectives on Aging

Rutgers University Press

Africa is known both for having a primarily youthful population and for its elders being held in high esteem. However, this situation is changing: people in Africa are living longer, some for many years with chronic, disabling illnesses. In Ghana, many older people, rather than experiencing a sense of security that they will be respected and cared for by the younger generations, feel anxious that they will be abandoned and neglected by their kin. In response to their concerns about care, they and their kin are exploring new kinds of support for aging adults, from paid caregivers to social groups and senior day centers. These innovations in care are happening in fits and starts, in episodic and scattered ways, visible in certain circles more than others. By examining emergent discourses and practices of aging in Ghana, Changes in Care makes an innovative argument about the uneven and fragile processes by which some social change occurs.

There is a short film that accompanies the book, “Making Happiness: Older People Organize Themselves” (2020), an 11-minute film by Cati Coe. Available at: https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-thke-hp15

Combining an innovative set of conceptual tools with meticulous presentation of ethnographic and historical research in both rural and urban contexts, this study makes a compelling contribution to understanding the dynamics of changing elder-care practices in Ghana. Topics covered include the intertwining of kin and non-kin roles in the work of care-giving and the uneasy relations between care-givers and domestic servants in households. Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart, co-authors of Language and Culture in Dialogue

Cati Coe understands the language of change, care and aging in Africa as well as the diversity of change in the context of the broader globalized world. She critically but sensitively explores these complexities without falling into tired binaries. Change in Africa and its implications for care are approached as complex, quiet and sporadic processes and not simplistically linear as still often proposed by exponents of modernization theory. Jaco Hoffman, co-editor of Intergenerational Contact Zones: Place-Based Strategies for Promoting Social Inclusion and Belonging

Combining an innovative set of conceptual tools with meticulous presentation of ethnographic and historical research in both rural and urban contexts, this study makes a compelling contribution to understanding the dynamics of changing elder-care practices in Ghana. Topics covered include the intertwining of kin and non-kin roles in the work of care-giving and the uneasy relations between care-givers and domestic servants in households. Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart, co-authors of Language and Culture in Dialogue

Cati Coe understands the language of change, care and aging in Africa as well as the diversity of change in the context of the broader globalized world. She critically but sensitively explores these complexities without falling into tired binaries. Change in Africa and its implications for care are approached as complex, quiet and sporadic processes and not simplistically linear as still often proposed by exponents of modernization theory. Jaco Hoffman, co-editor of Intergenerational Contact Zones: Place-Based Strategies for Promoting Social Inclusion

CATI COE is a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. She is the co-editor (with Parin Dosa) of Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin-Work (Rutgers University Press) and the author of The New American Servitude: Political Belonging among African Immigrant Home Care Workers.

Introduction
1 The Orthodoxy of Family Care
Part I Changes in Aging in the Rural Towns of the Eastern Region
2 Heterodox Ideas of Elder Care: From Nursing Homes to Savings
3 Alterodox Practices of Elder Care: Domestic Service and Neighborliness
4 “Loneliness Kills”: Stimulating Sociality among Older Churchgoers
Part II Changes in Aging in Urban Ghana
5 Market-Based Solutions for the Globally Connected Middle Class
6 Going to School to Be a Carer: A New Occupation and the Enchantment of Nursing Education
7 Carers as Househelp: Aging and Social Inequalities in Urban Households
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

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