Doctoral Dissertation Research: Institutionalized Eldercare in Contemporary China

耶鲁大学博士生罗斯·凯米格在马西娅·因霍恩博士的指导下，将调查当代中国中的老人、家庭和照顾者是如何协商新的制度化老年护理形式的。二十世纪几十年的改革，特别是20世纪70年代末的独生子女政策，导致了今天的中国严重的人口结构失衡。这些失衡反过来又刺激了在孝道规范和卫生保健服务私有化的背景下对住宿护理设施的需求增加。该项目是首批使用人种学研究方法研究中国老年机构化经历的项目之一，该项目是如何通过多元化的医疗系统、不断变化的道德世界、不断变化的人口结构和新的市场驱动的护理机会来中介的。这项拟议的研究将在云南省省会昆明进行，该省位于西南部的中国。这项研究结合了社会科学的方法，包括参与观察和对住院和非住院老人的工作人员、居民和家庭的采访，旨在展示人们是如何应对新形式的老年护理的日常挑战的。广泛的研究方法和信息来源将为生物医学化、血缘关系和城市化等更广泛的主题如何映射到当代中国的老龄化经历提供丰富的描述。此外，通过超越现有的人口统计和统计数据，这项研究试图揭示，通过将年迈的亲属从私人家庭转移到机构，家庭如何促进当代中国新形式的机构照顾的出现，以及作为老人、孝顺的孩子和照顾者的新方式的出现。这项研究不仅对中国，而且在全球都具有广泛的社会意义。通过展示老龄化是如何经历的，护理决策是如何做出的，以及家庭责任是如何在机构环境中重新处理的，该项目将阐明政策干预领域，使美国和世界各地未来的照顾者、老年人和家庭更容易实现人口结构转型。

Yale University doctoral student Rose Keimig, under the guidance of Dr. Marcia Inhorn, will investigate how elders, families, and caregivers are negotiating new forms of institutionalized eldercare in contemporary China. Decades of reforms during the twentieth century, and especially the one-child policy of the late 1970s, have given rise to stark demographic imbalances in China today. These imbalances have, in turn, stimulated an increase in demand for residential care facilities against a backdrop of filial piety norms and the privatization of health care services. The proposed project is one of the first to use ethnographic research methods to study how experiences with elderly institutionalization in China are mediated by pluralistic medical systems, changing moral worlds, shifting demographics, and new market-driven caregiving opportunities. The proposed research will be conducted in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southwestern China. Using a combination of social science methods, including participant observation and interviews with staff, residents, and families of institutionalized and non-institutionalized elders, this study aims to show how people are grappling with the everyday challenges of new forms of eldercare. The wide range of research methods and informants will provide a rich account of how the broader themes of biomedicalization, kinship, and urbanization map onto the aging experience in contemporary China. Furthermore, by going beyond the existing demographics and statistics, this research seeks to uncover how, by moving aging relatives out of private homes and into institutions, families are facilitating the emergence of new forms of institutional caregiving and new ways of being an elderly person, a filial child, and a caregiver in contemporary China.This research has broad social relevance, not just in China but across the globe. By showing how aging is experienced, how caregiving decisions are made, and how family responsibilities are reworked in institutional settings, this project will illuminate areas for policy interventions that will make demographic transitions easier for future caregivers, elders, and families in China, the U.S., and around the world.