Grandparenting as the resolution of kinship as experience

Miller, Daniel; Garvey, Pauline

doi:10.1111/1467-9655.13779

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…These implied causations are very different. If, however, we move up to a still higher analytical level we could find that in these field sites grandparenting is understood as contractual as opposed to other field sites where it used as an expression of freedom (e.g., Miller 2022). At this level we can engage in fruitful comparison.…”

Section: Comparative Insightsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Introduction: Comparative Insights from the ASSA Project

Miller

2023

A&A

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This introduction provides a basic description of the Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing (ASSA) project, including the project’s range of field sites, methods, and ethics. I compare this project with prior comparative studies in the anthropology of ageing. I also discuss certain other findings of the ASSA project as they relate to the ASSA researchers’ re-conceptualisation of the smartphone and our work on mHealth. I then consider how an anthropological approach to comparison differs from that of other disciplines, partly through examining methods of comparison found within the articles in this Special Issue. In particular, I contrast the idea that anthropologists can compare data regarded as commensurable because of a standardisation in how they were collected, to a view that anthropologists mostly do not collect commensurable data at all; in which case, perhaps anthropologists are best at making comparison at the level of implied causation, sometimes developing a spectrum of field sites where implied causation can itself act as a parameter of difference.

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Section: Comparative Insightsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Introduction: Comparative Insights from the ASSA Project

Miller

2023

A&A

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“…After travel and smartphone use, a third example from our field sites in Ireland came from observations about being a grandfather (Miller and Garvey 2022). One impact of the feminist movement was that some older men now felt that they had missed out on the experience of being a father, at a time when the emphasis was largely on the role of the mother.…”

Section: Implicit Life Purposementioning

confidence: 99%

Life Purpose in the Age of the Smartphone: Reflections from Comparative Anthropology

Abed Rabho,

De Vries,

Miller

2023

A&A

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In this paper, we investigate whether there exists in different societies something analogous to the idea of ‘life purpose.’ Drawing on examples from across the entire range of ASSA project field sites, the paper is organised as a spectrum, starting from the case of Japan where ikigai is the most explicit example of having a life purpose and is a commonly used expression. We then argue that, in some regions, such as Palestine, the idea of life purpose is entirely subsumed within religion. This is followed by several cases where social reproduction seems to dominate life purpose, often based on securing the success of future generations. We then turn to more implicit examples of life purpose, starting with Xinyuan Wang’s study of the relationship between the Cultural Revolution and the smartphone revolution in Shanghai. We then examine the case of Ireland where life purpose is extrapolated from a more general expansive cosmology. We end the paper with the possibility that some people in England may see an advantage in not having any sense of life purpose. In the conclusion, we argue that, just as we now recognise that social cohesion does not require the moral guidance of religion, so too is there no need to have a category of life purpose. But, either implicitly or explicitly, most cultures do have a variety of ideals that we might equate with life purpose.

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“…This strategy also inspires the adoption of friendship-the paradigmatic voluntaristic relationship-as the idiom for family relations as well ('my mother is also my best friend'). It becomes common parlance insofar as modern sensibilities, even with respect to family relations, eschew obligation and see authenticity in voluntaristic sentiment alone (Miller 2017;Miller and Garvey 2022).…”

Section: The Contradictions Of Social Reproductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social reproduction and the family: contradictions of childcare and eldercare in Germany

Weiss

2023

Dialect Anthropol

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At the heart of capitalism is a contradiction between capital’s need for value-producing labor, including the commodification of care work and care products, and capitalists’ pursuit of profit at all costs, including the value of wages and the life and wellbeing of workers. The family is entangled in this contradiction insofar as its members, and particularly its female members, are encouraged to care for their children and for their dependent parents without (adequate) compensation out of love or duty, at the same time as they are immersed in and held up to standards of autonomy and self-care. In this article, I unpack this entanglement with respect to men and women’s care for their children and for their dependent parents in Germany. I argue that family members live out a structural contradiction in the reproduction of capitalism as a personal and family conflict and assume its fallouts as their personal failures. This makes the family relationships that center on care singularly excessive and family members prone to questioning their commitment, sensibility, and competence as mothers and fathers and as daughters and sons.

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Grandparenting as the resolution of kinship as experience

Cited by 4 publications

References 41 publications

Introduction: Comparative Insights from the ASSA Project

Introduction: Comparative Insights from the ASSA Project

Life Purpose in the Age of the Smartphone: Reflections from Comparative Anthropology

Social reproduction and the family: contradictions of childcare and eldercare in Germany

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