Education of values: Marketizing the aging population in urban China

Authors

  • Yifan Wang Rice University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2021.305

Keywords:

eldercare, marketization, population, ethics, development, values

Abstract

In this article, I examine some of the marketing and sales strategies at Gardenview, a newly established eldercare company that ran a few residential eldercare facilities in Nanjing, China. There, like elsewhere in urban China, the projected aging demography was mobilized to push for an industrialization (chanyehua)—marketization and professionalization—of eldercare, transforming ideas and experience of eldercare by putting forward a new set of knowledge of aging. To this end, I first ground the rising eldercare industry in the transitioning paradigm of conceptualizing China’s population from population control to demographic aging. Then I explore ethnographically how Gardenview participated in the eldercare industry in a rapidly aging China. In particular, I look at the floorplans and the marketing stories as devices of the education of values—as prices, the good and desirable, and differentiators—to understand the social, economic, and ethical dynamics instigated by a transitioning demography. These values, as I show, are crucial in linking everyday life and choices with the paradigmatic shift of China’s population. Finally, I discuss how understanding the very processes of marketing and sales as an education of values could shed further light on what anthropologist Michael Fischer calls “literacies of the future” as a socially and economically elaborated and contested world of an aging China.

References

Allison, Anne. 2017. “Greeting the Dead: Managing Solitary Existence in Japan.” Social Text 35 (1 (130)): 17–35.

Aulino, Felicity. 2017. “Narrating the Future: Population Aging and the Demographic Imaginary in Thailand.” Medical Anthropology 36 (4): 319–31.

Buch, Elana D. 2013. “Senses of Care: Embodying Inequality and Sustaining Personhood in the Home Care of Older Adults in Chicago.” American Ethnologist 40 (4): 637–50.

Chen, Honglin, Hui Yang, Priscilla Song, and Lu Wang. 2017. “An Ambiguous Sense of Professional Identity: Community-Based Caregivers for Older Adults in China.” Ageing International 42 (2): 236–50.

Chen, Lin. 2016. Evolving Eldercare in Contemporary China: Two Generations, One Decision. New York: Springer.

Chen, Lin, Minzhi Ye, and Eva Kahana. 2016. “‘Their Today Is Our Future’: Direct Carers’ Work Experience and Formal Caring Relationships in a Community-Based Eldercare Program in Shanghai.” Journal of Applied Gerontology 37 (4): 516–37.

Chong, Kimberly. 2018. Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in China. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Cohen, Lawrence. 1992. “No Aging in India: The Uses of Gerontology.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 16 (2): 123–61.

Danely, Jason. 2015. Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.

———. 2016. “Affect, Infrastructure, and Vulnerability: Making and Breaking Japanese Eldercare.” Medicine Anthropology Theory 3 (2): 198–222.

Diamond, Timothy. 1992. Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Dunn, Elizabeth C. 2004. Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Feng, Chen, and Hang Xiao. 2015. “‘Father of Birth Planning’ Tian Xueyuan: Having Only One Child Is the Solution of No Solutions (‘Jihuashengyu Zhi Fu’ Tian Xueyuan: Zhi Sheng Yige Haizi Shi Meiyou Banfa de Banfa).” News Dig. June 23, 2015. Accessed May 5, 2019. http://news.sina.com.cn/c/zg/jpm/2015-06-23/16491168.html.

Feng, Zhanlian, Chang Liu, Xinping Guan, and Vincent Mor. 2012. “China’s Rapidly Aging Population Creates Policy Challenges In Shaping A Viable Long-Term Care System.” Health Affairs (Project Hope) 31 (12): 2764–73.

Fischer, Edward F. 2014. The Good Life: Aspiration, Dignity, and the Anthropology of Wellbeing. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Fischer, Michael M. J. 2015. “Ethnography for Aging Societies: Dignity, Cultural Genres, and Singapore’s Imagined Futures.” American Ethnologist 42 (2): 207–29.

Graeber, David. 2001. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave.

Greenhalgh, Susan. 2008. Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Hanser, Amy. 2008. Service Encounters: Class, Gender, and the Market for Social Distinction in Urban China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Harper, Sarah. 1992. “Caring for China’s Ageing Population: The Residential Option — A Case Study of Shanghai.” Ageing & Society 12 (2): 157–84.

Harrell, Stevan, and Deborah S. Davis, eds. 1993. Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Hsu, Francis L. K. 1971. “Filial Piety in Japan and China: Borrowing, Variation and Significance.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 2 (1): 67–74.

Ikels, Charlotte, ed. 2004. Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Kaufman, Sharon R. 2011. “Making Longevity in an Aging Society: Linking Medicare Policy and the New Ethical Field.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 53 (3): 407–24.

Kaufman, Sharon R., and Lakshmi Fjord. 2011. “Medicare, Ethics, and Reflexive Longevity: Governing Time and Treatment in an Aging Society.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 25 (2): 209–31.

Lin, Yen-Chun, and Lian-Hua Huang. 2018. “Self-Supporting Care Model for Older Adults.” The Journal of Nursing 65 (2): 20–26.

Liu, Jing. 2018. “End of year review: listed companies going through trials and turbulence (Nianzhong pandian: shangshi gongsi fengyu ruhui, jiming buyi).” 60 Plus. December 27, 2018. Accessed August 20, 2020. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/LFkumdjTxXFQ0KEYThkyzA.

Lock, Margaret, and Patricia Kaufert. 2001. “Menopause, Local Biologies, and Cultures of Aging.” American Journal of Human Biology 13 (4): 494–504.

Lock, Margaret M. 1993. Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Marx, Karl. 1976. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Ben Fowkes. Vol. 1. New York: Penguin books.

Mazzarella, William. 2003. Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Mol, Annemarie. n.d. “Care and Its Values: Good Food in the Nursing Home.” In Care in Practice: On Tinkering in Clinics, Homes, and Farms, edited by Annemarie Mol, Ingunn Moser, and Jeannette Pols, 215–33. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Munn, Nancy D. 1992. The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim Society. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Nanjing Municipal Human Resource and Social Security Bureau. 2019. “Announcement of Publicizing 2018 Nanjing Municipal Social Security Information.” Accessed August 5, 2020. http://rsj.nanjing.gov.cn//zwgk/shbxxxgk/201905/t20190509_1533205.html.

Nanjing Municipal Statistics Bureau. 2018. “Annual Data.” Accessed August 5, 2020. http://221.226.86.104.ipv6.nanjing.gov.cn/_web/_plugs/statTable/statTableForQuery.jsp?statTableCategoryId=5&_p=YXM9MSZ0PTAmcD0xJm09TiY_#.

Oxfeld, Ellen. 2017. Bitter and Sweet: Food, Meaning, and Modernity in Rural China. Oakland: University of California Press.

People’s Republic of China Ministry of Civil Affairs. 2014. “Statistical Communiqué of the People’s Republic of China on the 2013 Social Service Development.” Accessed 8/10/2020. http://www.mca.gov.cn/article/sj/tjgb/201406/201406156561679.shtml.

———. 2019. “Statistical Communiqué of the People’s Republic of China on the 2018 Social Service Development.” Accessed 8/10/2020. http://www.mca.gov.cn/article/sj/tjgb/201908/20190800018807.shtml.

Savishinsky, Joel S. 2003. “‘Bread and Butter’ Issues: Food, Conflict, and Control in a Nursing Home.” In Gray Areas: Ethnographic Encounters with Nursing Home Culture, edited by Philip B. Stafford, 103–20. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Schefold, Bertram. 2005. “Use Value and the ‘Commercial Knowledge of Commodities’: Reflections on Aristotle, Savary and the Classics.” In Value, Distribution and Capital: Essays in Hornour of Pierangelo Garegnani, edited by Gary Mongiovi and Fabio Petri, 109–29. New York: Routledge.

Shi, Lihong. 2017. Choosing Daughters: Family Change in Rural China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Thang, Leng Leng. 2001. Generations in Touch: Linking the Old and Young in a Tokyo Neighborhood. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Tian, Xueyuan. 1980. “On the Problem of ‘Population Aging’ (Guanyu Renkou ‘laolinghua’ Wenti).” Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily), March 18, 1980.

Traphagan, John W. 2000. Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan. Albany: State University of New York Press.

UNFPA, and HelpAge. 2012. Ageing in the Twenty-First Century: A Celebration and A Challenge. New York: United Nations Population Fund.

United Nations. 2015. “Global Issues Overview.” November 19, 2015. Accessed September 18, 2018. http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/global-issues-overview/index.html.

White, Tyrene. 2018. China’s Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People’s Republic, 1949–2005. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. http://muse.jhu.edu/book/61671.

World Health Organization. 2015. China Country Assessment Report on Ageing and Health. Geneva: WHO Press. Accessed September 20, 2018. http://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/194271.

Wright, James. 2018. “Tactile Care, Mechanical Hugs: Japanese Caregivers and Robotic Lifting Devices.” Asian Anthropology 17 (1): 24–39.

Yan, Yunxiang. 2003. Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Zeng, Yi. 2012. “Towards Deeper Research and Better Policy for Healthy Aging --Using the Unique Data of Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey.” China Economic Journal 5 (2–3): 131–49.

Zhan, Heying Jenny, and Rhonda J. V. Montgomery. 2003. “Gender and Elder Care In China: The Influence of Filial Piety and Structural Constraints.” Gender & Society 17 (2): 209–29.

Zhan, Heying Jenny, Xiaotian Feng, and Baozhen Luo. 2008. “Placing Elderly Parents in Institutions in Urban China: A Reinterpretation of Filial Piety.” Research on Aging 30 (5): 543–71.

Zhang, Hong. 2006. “Family Care or Residential Care? The Moral and Practical Dilemmas Facing the Elderly in Urban China.” Asian Anthropology 5 (1): 57–83.

Downloads

Published

2021-11-11

Issue

Vol. 42 No. 2 (2021)

Section

Articles

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.