About face: Relationalities of ageing and dying in Chinese migrant families

Publication date: Available online 30 January 2020Source: Social Science & MedicineAuthor(s): Tanya ZivkovicAbstractAdvance care planning is premised on concepts of individual autonomy and self-determination. The standardisation of this individualist approach to decision-making erases the diverse cultural sensibilities and vocabularies that shape trajectories of care. In attempting to redress this exclusion, this paper foregrounds previously overlooked vernaculars and practices for understanding how care for the aged and those approaching the end of life is understood and enacted in Australia's culturally diverse society. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and participant-observation with ageing Chinese migrants and their families in Adelaide, South Australia, it examines the multiple enactments of ‘face’ in end-of-life care. In so doing, the paper extends Goffman's theorisation of ‘face’, opening up the ‘front’ of the bounded individual to reveal how persons are mutually implicated in relational contexts. Attending to cultural contours of face and their intersections with filial piety, this paper unsettles the imperative of selfdetermination in advance care planning and reveals how intergenerational shifts from older to younger generations can reorient care at the end of life.
Source: Social Science and Medicine - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research