Care as Process: A Life-course Perspective on the Remaking of Ethics and Values of Care in Daiden, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article addresses care as a socially, culturally, historically, and politically constituted ‘process’ and relates to ethnographic data gained during long-term anthropological fieldwork in Daiden, a place in the Lower Ramu River area of Papua New Guinea. It focuses in particular on the situation of elderly people as well as on intergenerational shifts. Analytically, the four dimensions of care (caring about, taking care of, care-giving, care-receiving) and their related values (attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness), as developed within the ‘ethics of care’ framework by feminist scholars are applied in order to delineate the remaking of local ethics of care in the face of wider contemporary societal transformations. By means of a ‘life-course perspective’ the article aims to shed light on the ways in which such a remaking has been perceived and evaluated in Daiden, thus augmenting the idea of care as a process rather than as a natural and/or atemporal disposition. The article also tackles pressing social welfare issues in contemporary Papua New Guinea in a more general way.