Recent studies conclude that ethnic minority families in Denmark tend to be dismissive of senior housing and municipal homecare services for elderly family members. A large proportion of Muslim minority families in Denmark attach great importance to caring for the elderly as a tradition and prefer to take care of their own elderly family members at home. Nevertheless, the fact that morality, incentives, and obligations in relation to care for the elderly may be legitimized and/or contested with reference to cultural traditions and Islam has not received much attention in current research. In this article, drawing on material from ongoing ethnographic fieldwork among Arab Muslim families in Denmark, I discuss how cultural and religious backgrounds may determine and influence perceptions and behavior regarding care for the elderly. By observing and engaging in the everyday life of an Arab Muslim family, I explore how caring for elderly people with health problems at home raises specific questions about obligations and triggers negotiations across genders and generations. I argue that besides kinship and ethnicity, it is equally important to consider religiosity in an attempt to learn more about how Arab Muslims care for their elderly family members.
Artiklen baseres på forskningsprojektet AISHA, der fokuserer på de stadigt flere plejekræ- vende ældre med minoritetsbaggrund, der på baggrund af Servicelovens §94 vælger at få deres hjemkommune til at ansætte et familiemedlem som deres ”selvudpegede hjælper”. Typisk falder valget på en ægtefælle, datter eller svigerdatter, der får til opgave at levere de omsorgsydelser, som den ældre er visiteret til. Normalt vil dette blive varetaget af uddan- nede hjemmehjælpere eller plejehjemspersonale, men nu er det altså et nært familiemedlem, der er ansat til opgaverne. Mad og måltider er et af de store konfliktfelter mellem de ældre borgere, deres selvudpegede hjælpere og den kommunale visitation. Aktørerne har ganske enkelt forskellige tilgange og forståelser af madens formål, funktion og betydninger. Ofte re- sulterer kommunale visitatorers bestræbelser på at skabe samme rammer og lige muligheder for alle ældre borgere, paradoksalt nok i at plejekrævende minoritetsældre og deres familier bliver yderligere marginaliseret i det danske samfund.
This paper examines how individualization changes young Muslims women's interpretation of the headscarf as a religiousOver the past decade, an interesting transformation in the way young Muslim women in Europe approach the headscarf is to be noticed. Recent anthropological and ethnographical studies conclude that a diversity of interpretations of Muslim dress is visible in Europe, and Muslim women do not wear religious dress solely out of devotion. Further, studies demonstrate that young Muslim women wearing a headscarf in Europe are undergoing major transformations, shaped not only by local and global, social, religious and political forces, but also by issues of personal aesthetics, ethics, fashion, identity and faith (Tarlo 2010, Koskennurmi-Sivonen 2004, Christiansen 2011, Mossière 2012. Young Muslim women born and/or raised
This article takes the practice of elderly care as a starting place to discuss how Muslim men and women “do” piety when doing elderly care in their everyday lives. It introduces and analyses central passages in the Qur’an and the Hadiths that deal with birr-al- walidayn (filial piety), ‘awra (the intimate body parts that must be covered), and ‘ayb (shame/shamefulness) since they all appear as central concepts in the Islamic tradition of elderly care. With a focus on the embodied enactment of these concepts, the article turns to the analysis of two ethnographic cases to look at how Muslims “do” care for their elderly parents and at the same time strive to embody their sacred text, the Qur’an, and the Hadiths in everyday life. The article aims to show that “doing” elderly care enables a domain of pious doings that matters to how Muslim men and women perform and understand gender.
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