Imagining Institutional Care, Practicing Domestic Care: Inscriptions around Aging in Southern Ghana

Authors

  • Cati Coe Rutgers University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2018.169

Keywords:

aging, care, religion, state policy, institutional facilities

Abstract

Elder care has become a significant national conversation in Ghana due to urban and international migration, lower birth rates, family nuclearization, and longer life spans. In the rural towns of Ghana’s Eastern Region, new elder care practices and discourses are emerging. These age-inscriptions signal the agency of older persons, which  is  often  neglected  and  overlooked.  Discursively,  older  adults  express  curiosity  about  Western  care facilities, a heterodox idea in relation to the orthodox position expressed by the Ghanaian government and NGOs which support kin care for older adults. Through this heterodox discourse, aged persons are able to critique the state and the church for not providing care and re-imagine a Western institution as fitting their locally constructed  needs. On the  other  hand, pragmatically, aged persons  and their children  are adapting existing  practices  of  adolescent  fosterage  to  help  provide  elder  care,  a  practice  which  is  not  discursively elaborated, and is therefore alterodox. Both age-inscriptions are less articulated than standardized discourses about the significance of adult children’s care, the orthodox position. This paper therefore illustrates how social change in norms occurs, through older people’s anxiety about their own aging, the use of their imagination, and their refashioning of existing care practices.

Author Biography

Cati Coe, Rutgers University

Cati Coe is Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University.

References

Aboderin, Isabella. 2006. Intergenerational Support and Old Age in Africa. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Adinkrah, Mensah. 2015. Witchcraft, Witches, and Violence in Ghana. New York: Berghahn Books.

Alber, Erdmute. 2010. No School without Foster Families in Northern Benin: A Social Historical Approach. In Parenting after the Century of the Child. Travelling Ideals, Institutional Negotiations and Individual Responses, edited by Haldis Haukanes and Tatjana Thelen, 57-78. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Amselle, Jean-Loup. 2002. Globalization and the Future of Anthropology. African Affairs 101: 213-229.

Anon. 2018. “Parliament Must Pass Ageing Policy—Prof. Mate Kole.” Citinewsroom, 15 June. https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Parliament-must-pass-ageing-policy-Prof-Mate-

Kole-660405.

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Apt, Nana Araba. 1996. Coping with Old Age in a Changing Africa. Aldershot: Avebury.

____. 1991. The Aged and Disabled in Ghana: Policy Perspectives. Prepared for the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Social Sector Division, Accra, June 1991. Report in the Center for Social Policy Research/Social Work Department Library, University of Ghana, Legon.

Ardayfio-Schandorf, Elizabeth and Margaret Amissah. 1996. “Incidence of Child Fostering among School Children in Ghana.” In The Changing Family in Ghana, edited by Ardayfio-Schandorf, 179-200. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.

Ayete-Nyampong, Samuel. 2008. Pastoral Care of the Elderly in Africa: A Comparative and Cross-Cultural Study. Accra North: Step Publishers.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cattell, Maria G. 1999. “Elders’ Complaints: Discourses on Old Age and Social Change in Rural Kenya and Urban Philadelphia.” In Language and Communication in Old Age: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Heidi E. Hamilton, 295-317. New York: Garland Publishing.

Coe, Cati. 2016. “Orchestrating Care in Time: Ghanaian Migrant Women, Family, and Reciprocity.” American Anthropologist 118(1): 37-48.

____. 2013. The Scattered Family: Parenting, African Migrants, and Global Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

____. 2011. "What is Love? The Materiality of Care in Ghanaian Transnational Families." International Migration 49(6): 7-24.

Cole, Jennifer. 2013. On Generations and Aging: “Fresh Contact” of a Different Sort. In Transitions and Transformations: Cultural Perspectives on Aging and the Life Course, edited by Caitrin Lynch and Jason Danely, 218-230. New York: Berghahn.

de-Graft Aikins, Ama, J. Addo, F. Ofei, W. Bosu, and C. Agyemang. 2012. Ghana’s Burden of Chronic, Non-Communicable Diseases: Future Directions in Research, Practice, and Policy. Ghana Medical Journal 46(2 Supplement): 1-3.

de Jong, Willemijn, Claudia Roth, Fatoumata Badini-Kinda, and Seema Bhagyanath. 2005. Ageing in Insecurity: Case Studies on Social Security and Gender in India and Burkina Faso. Münster: Lit Verlag.

Doh, Daniel. 2012. Exploring Social Protection Arrangements for Older People: Evidence from Ghana. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing.

Dodoo, Samuel, Sophia Adade, Stephen Kpormegbe, Mabel Cudjoe, and Robert D. Agyarko. 1999. Contributions of Older Persons to Development: The Accra Study. Report in the Center for Social Policy Research/Social Work Department Library, University of Ghana, Legon.

Dsane, Sarah. 2013. Changing Cultures and Care of the Elderly. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing.

Ghana Statistical Service. 2012. Ghana 2010 Population and Housing Census. Accra: Ghana Statistical Service.

Gilbert, Michelle. 1995. The Christian Executioner: Christianity and Chieftaincy as Rivals. Journal of Religion in Africa 25(4): 347-86.

Graw, Knut and Samuli Schielke, eds. 2012. The Global Horizon: Expectations of Migration in Africa and the Middle East. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Hamdy, Sherine. 2008. When the State and Your Kidneys Fail: Political Etiologies in an Egyptian Dialysis Ward. American Ethnologist 35(4): 553-569.

Lamb, Sarah. 2016. Traveling Institutions as Transnational Aging: The Old-Age Home in Idea and Practice in India. In Transnational Aging: Current Insights and Future Challenges, edited by Vincent Horn and Cornelia Schweppe, 178-199. New York: Routledge.

McNay, Lois. 2008. Against Recognition. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Middleton, John. 1983. One Hundred and Fifty Years of Christianity in a Ghanaian Town. Africa 53(3): 2-19.

Oppong, Christine. 1974. Marriage among a Matrilineal Elite: a Family Study of Ghanaian Senior Civil Servants. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Roth, Claudia. 2005. Threatening Dependency: Limits of Social Security, Old Age, and Gender. In Ageing in Insecurity: Case Studies on Social Security and Gender in India and Burkina Faso, edited by Willemijn de Jong, Claudia Roth, Fatoumata Badini-Kinda, and Seema Bhagyanath, 107-138. Münster: Lit Verlag.

Sewell, William H. 2005. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sichingabula, Y. M. 2000a. The Provision of Housing and Care for Older Persons in Lusaka, Zambia. Southern African Journal of Gerontology 9(1): 10-14.

______. 2000b. An Environmental Assessment of Divine Providence Home in Lusaka, Zambia. Southern African Journal of Gerontology 9(1): 25-29.

Thelen, Tatjana and Cati Coe. Forthcoming. “Political Belonging through Elder Care: Temporalities, Representations, and Mutuality.” Anthropological Theory. Available online, December 2017.

Van der Geest, Sjaak. 2016. Will Families in Ghana Continue to Care for Older People? Logic and Contradiction in Policy. In Ageing in Sub-Saharan Africa: Spaces and Practices of Care, edited by Jaco Hoffman and Katrien Pype, 21-42. Bristol: Policy Press.

Wang, Jing and Bei Wu. 2016. Domestic Helpers as Frontline Workers in China’s Home-Based Elder Care: A Systematic Review. Journal of Aging and Women DOI: 10.1080/08952841.2016.1187536

Downloads

Published

2018-09-24 — Updated on 2023-04-05

Issue

Vol. 39 No. 1 (2018)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2018 Cati Coe

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.