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ABSTRACT
Theoretical debates around the study of ‘kinning’, or emergent intimacies, have usually centred on parent–child relationships, while the later stages of life have largely been ignored. The author suggests that one of the fundamental dilemmas in later-life-kinning lies in the ‘means-ends dichotomy’ and argues that ‘fiction’ may help people to creatively tackle this dichotomy. Ethnographic data were collected from Sri Lanka, where the elderly are prompted to rearrange and/or extend their care relationships, both within and beyond the boundaries of family, against the backdrop of dynamic socio-demographic changes. Evolving in a relatively informal fashion, these activities to rearrange and extend care relationships often involve the direct/indirect mediation of money. Undertaking a detailed case study of an elderly woman, Dorothy, and her caregiver-cum-’kin’ Piyadasa, the author aims to illustrate how fiction enables us to face unfathomable situations or fundamental contradictions – in this case, a means-ends dichotomy. Contrary to the assertion that fiction in the process of kinning can help one define or ‘discover’ a destined, permanent relationship to form a ‘pseudo-biological’ relationship as suggested in previous research on adoption, this paper demonstrates how fiction can help us dwell in uncertainty and gradually reshape our relationships to one another.
Acknowledgements
This paper is based on fieldwork conducted over several years, which has been possible thanks to the support of many people. I am especially grateful to all those who were generous in sharing their time and thoughts with me and provided various support in the field. I am furthermore indebted to the anonymous reviewers and editors for their helpful comments. Part of the fieldwork was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI Grant Number 16K16965.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The ‘pavla’ or conjugal household unit being the basis of social life, the custom of ultimogeniture and a mild sense of virilocality (Gamburd Citation2013) seem to have persisted not only in people's moral imaginations but also in real life, as suggested by some studies on the living arrangements of the elderly population in selected communities.
2 Children were no longer labour sources for the family economy; instead, they were expected to ‘study well’ and get a job with higher prestige, which would raise the social status of the family. In rural areas, since as early as the 1950s, ‘academic success was more frequently mentioned as a desirable quality than was the hope that the child would take care of the parents in their old age’ (Straus Citation1955; 155 ctd. in Dissanayake Citation2012, 74). The fact that in 1967, 64 per cent of university admissions were from rural areas (where 70 per cent of the population lived) (Uswatte-Aratchi Citation1974, 298) and 75 per cent of admitted students were the children of non-clerical, teaching, professional workers (Ibid, 306), suggests the enthusiasm of rural parents for educating their children.
3 Most often, daily care and living costs are covered by a co-residing child and his/her family (who are subsequently more likely to receive a larger allocation of the parent's property, including house and land). Major expenditure on housing, new clothes and utensils, and rituals, including funeral and subsequent dāna ceremonies, are conducted mainly by children w earning better salaries in big cities or abroad.
4 Leach (Citation1961) argued that the kinship norm in Pul Eliya (a Sinhalese village in Dry Zone) may be described in ‘statistical’ terms, but individuals’ behaviours are diverse and almost unpredictable for villagers themselves, because it is not so much the moral forces as topographical arrangement, economic interest, practical concerns, etc. of individual actors that influence the course of action. Kinship behaviour and transactions can thus always be unique events, as individual actualisations of multiple possibilities. While Leach intended to amplify his findings on the unpredictability of kinship behaviour to kinship studies in general, it would be fair to add that certain characteristics of Sinhalese kinship customs may have added further to its ‘indeterminate’ nature.
5 A similar conclusion, though entirely different in its socio-economic outlook, can be observed in Ammavarune (2004). It depicts the reunion of a son, who had left his mother alone in the village to join the army (one of the best choices for him, though later he flees, disillusioned), with his senile mother unable to recognise him anymore, giving the son a shocking reckoning.
6 One such example is the following famous Sinhala kavī: baḍa gini velā mā giya kala puthuge ge ṭa/mänila vī dekak (mitak/tikak) dunnayi mallaka ṭa/gandō nogandō kiyalā sithuni maṭa/mänila da puthē, kiri dunne man numba ṭa? (Feeling hungry, I went to my son's house/He measured two cups of (unhusked) rice and gave me in a sack/Should I take it, or not, I ponder/Did I measure, my son, when I fed my breast milk to you?) A mother visits her son's house, feeling hungry. When she is given a sack of rice, she hesitates to take it, for she is saddened by the sight of her son matter-of-factly measuring out a limited amount of unhusked rice to give her. She recalls that when she used to breastfeed him, she let him suckle as much as he wanted, and she inaudibly blames him for his ignorant attitude. The issue here is not whether the son offered what was demanded by his mother, but whether or not he is aware of and acknowledges the limitless gift given by his mother. Apparently he does not, as evidenced by his act of ‘measuring’. The act of ‘measuring’ not only proves his lack of gratitude, but also turns the parent-child tie into ‘two parties in negotiation’, putting the mother in a weaker position. The fact that the mother only ponders and does not dare to speak her inner feelings aloud heightens the thoughtlessness of the son's gesture.
7 Perhaps they are not mutually exclusive in an absolute sense, but rather in a temporal sense: at any one time, we are either means-oriented or ends-oriented. Thus, claiming that this is always ends-oriented seems absurd.
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Sae Nakamura
Sae Nakamura holds a PhD (Area Studies) from Kyoto University, Japan. Her concerns are broadly aimed at themes in medical anthropology with a focus on care, ethics and humanitarianism. Sae has been conducting fieldwork in Sri Lanka since 2007, visiting and residing at care homes as well as rural/urban communities in various parts of Sri Lanka. Alongside her articles on aging and care, she has published her first monograph Communicative Body: An ethnography of home for elders in Sri Lanka (2017, in Japanese). Currently she serves as Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University.