Leisure as self-care in the times of the pandemic: Insights from a time-use diary study in India

ABSTRACT

In this research note, we discuss how the pandemic forged a renewed interest in self-care among urban older Indians. A reflexive thematic analysis of time-use diaries (N = 15) allows us to examine leisure patterns and everyday subjectivities of middle-class older Indians. In particular, time-diaries reveal a heightened focus on leisure-based enacted self-care practices including meditation, online activity/learning, and socialising. Consistent with previous scholarship of an unequivocal gender inequality in leisure as self-care, we observe distinct differences among men and women in their engagement with self-care. Specifically, while men engaged in outdoor activities as a way to cope with the stress and uncertainties of the pandemic, women’s everyday lives continued to be defined by domesticity and household management. Additionally, we show that while immediately uplifting, the ethics of self-care embodies the neoliberal logic of the entrepreneurial subject that makes self-reliance a necessity to practice responsible citizenship in times of the pandemic. Overall, by shifting the logics of care to the self, we depart from the more commonly held notion of older adults being recipients of care to the crafting of autonomous subjects through the pandemic-led public health practices of committed citizenship and civic virtue.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-Care
• COVID19
• ageing
• time-use
• neoliberalism
• India

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the informants for their valuable time. We would also like to thank our anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://silvertalkies.com/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ashwin Tripathi

Ashwin Tripathi is a Ph.D. Scholar in Social Gerontology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar. Her doctoral work lies at the intersection of social gerontology, leisure studies, and time-use studies. She explores the everyday blurring of productive and unproductive activities, especially leisure activities among older adults in India.

Tannistha Samanta

Tannistha Samanta, PhD, is an Associate Professor with the Department of Sociology, FLAME University, Pune, India. Her research lies at the interdisciplinary crossroads of family sociology and gerontology where she focuses on living arrangements, social capital, health policy, older adult sexualities, and theory development in aging studies. Currently, she serves as a co-editor of the journal of Anthropology & Aging and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Family Studies.