Conclusion

Abstract

This concluding chapter argues that, rather than providing a framework for understanding how things “really are,” rituals of care show an alternative mechanism for making things so. Ritual in this sense is a subjunctive mode that brings the world into being through acting as if it were a particular way, rather than claiming it to be so. Through rituals of care, one can take seriously ways of acting “as if” actions accomplish certain ends and provide for others in particular ways, as the caregivers in this book do, rather than judging such acts as solid assertions of how the world is or is taken to be. Rituals thus serve one's “plodding through” mundane life, as a guide to ethical action that builds over time. Showing up and going through the motions is of utmost importance. Seeing clearly how care takes ritual shape in Thailand offers building blocks for individual, group, and societal transformation. In terms of rote repetition, the basic stuff of care, ritual shows how humans create dispositions—right down to norms of perception—that brings forward a means of reorientation and change impossible to produce by rhetoric alone. Doing is necessary. Doing is transformative, even when repetitive.