Paper short abstract:

The 'Rocket' top was a glamourous garment my mother 'loved to death'. It gained its moniker from my mother's unshakeable belief that she "would go straight up, express, like a rocket, to God!" Gaining a status and life of its own, it transformed waiting for death from a passive to embodied experience.

Paper long abstract:

The 'Rocket' top, a garment my mother 'loved to death', was resplendent to look at, emerald and acquamarine chiffon, with bell sleeves, and a 'pious' neckline peppered with tiny, gold bugle beads - the kind of top that one might wear while sipping cocktails at a posh island resort. Not everyone's first choice to wear while dying, which my mother Marie did, as part of her preparations to meet her Maker. Glamourous and feminine, it gained its moniker from my mother's unshakeable belief that she "would go straight up, express, like a rocket, to God!"

Marie wanted to look good, even though in hospital, the mortal world, she had chosen to starve to death, by refusing all medications and food for several weeks. During that time, there were many aborted missions to God central, however, each time, the Rocket top was carefully washed and hung in the wardrobe of her hospital room, ready for action. This top gained a status and life of its own, even annotated in clinical notes as a special top, that if requested, must be found. It was imbued with power: nurses grew emotional about talking about it; some defended it from being removed by others who were ignorant of its significance; and others openly grieved as they dressed Marie in it. In short, the legendary 'Rocket' top had become an agent of change that visually transported waiting for death in a clinical, detached environment, from being a passive, austere affair, to celebrating the arrival at one's destiny.

Paper short abstract:

What are the moral meanings of aged care? Does dementia care imply additional moral responsibilities? In this paper I explore the moral landscape of care in contemporary society through an examination of current regulatory governance and its practical implications for aged and dementia care.

Paper long abstract:

What can official state regulation tell us about the moral meanings of dementia care in contemporary Australian society? Australia's aged care industry is subject to dense 'swarms' of regulatory intervention. Care has complex moral meaning, and morality is also implicated in governance 'in the public interest' and 'community standards'. Rarely, however, is regulation itself explored as a moral enterprise. Drawing on a national study of the effects of regulation on dementia care, I attempt in this paper to disentangle the convoluted relationships between care and morality, policy and practice. Regulation is variously understood as: a means of social control, an impingement on organisational and individual autonomy, and as a process of behaviour modification. As I advocate here, an alternative definition of regulation - as the formalisation of obligation - brings the undergirding moral enterprise into focus. This is a terrain often abstractly debated by ethicists, and its more concrete exploration poses significant methodological challenges for social scientists; I consider that an ethnographic sensibility provides a solution to these challenges. By examining current national regulatory arrangements for aged care, and taking insights from notable ethnographic engagements, I explore the moral landscape of care in contemporary Australian society, and further identify the specific moral concerns involved in dementia care.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how older Japanese navigate the tensions between intimacy and avoidance of ‘burdening others’, focusing on interactions in a community salon for the elderly. It argues that formality serves as an enabling device for creating new relationships and preserving sociality.

Paper long abstract:

In contrast to Western discourses of 'successful aging', which emphasize independence, productivity, self-maintenance, and the individual self as a project (Lamb 2014), Japanese aging emphasizes relations to others. A duty to care for aging family members on the one hand, and a moral imperative to not to be a burden on the other, form a tension at the centre of moral subjectivity for older Japanese. Based on ethnography of a community centre in the city of Osaka, the paper explores how topics and styles of conversation, modes of interaction between salon-goers, and the construction of well-being, are constituted with respect to a pervasive concern for manners and for the emotions of others. Focusing on the importance of "form" and its relevance for morality, I argue that formality serves as an enabling device for creating new relationships among older Japanese, preserving sociality while protecting oneself and others from the burdens of emotion and excessive proximity.

Paper short abstract:

In Northern England, Methodism offered an industrial-era morality. Post-industry, Methodism is waning, its congregations dwindling and greying. This paper reflects upon moral meaning-making among the ageing congregation of a small chapel that had become unhitched from its wider community.

Paper long abstract:

What is it like to grow old with a moral code that has lost its societal resonance? The former textile district in West Yorkshire where I undertook fieldwork in 2011-12 is among the landscapes that feature prominently in E.P. Thompson's classic, The Making of the English Working Class. Thompson was an (in)famous critic of Methodism; I was a diligent fieldwork chapel-goer, sharing my Sundays with a small Methodist congregation who, all over seventy, represented the last generation of local textile workers. As they faced the eventual closure of their beloved chapel, the congregation felt themselves abandoned by the surrounding community. For them, conscious of their age and clutching clear moral values, this was a sure sign of generational lapse. But, had the young wandered far off - or had what had once been a landscape for a good Methodist irrevocably altered? As I will consider here, the chapel's decline signifies a postindustrial social shift. Though Thompson pilloried Methodism, he aptly identified it as a faith for an industrial era; raised through Sunday School and into membership, the West Yorkshire Methodists had been formed in a milieu where to obey the work bell's ring, spurn the pub, and perch attentively in the pew was to be moral. Post-industry, they were growing old, while the morality they shared had, for others, grown dusty. In this paper, I reflect upon the moral meaning-making of working class people ageing and keeping faith amidst postindustrial estrangement.

Paper short abstract:

Through an ethnography of older people in post-industrial England, a cohort that in unexpectedly large numbers voted for the United Kingdom Independence Party in the recent General Election, this paper explores the moral dimensions of neoliberalism as an hegemonic project in erstwhile socialist heartlands.

Paper long abstract:

The 2015 General Election in Britain saw a dramatic rise in votes for The United Kingdom Independence Party, an erstwhile fringe political party devoted principally to withdrawal from the European Union, more stringent controls on immigration and cuts in government expenditure, especially on welfare provision. An entirely expected feature of the UKIP voting demographic was its relatively advanced age. An unexpected phenomenon however, was the success of UKIP in the Labour Party's traditional heartlands in post-industrial northeast England, where in many constituencies it became the second largest party. Based on research on a former coal-mining town in Northumberland this paper unpacks a common shared narrative amongst older UKIP voters. The central substantive foci of the narrative are fears about the demise of traditional extended and nuclear families and the socialisation of children. And its explanatory essence is that collapse of the local coal industry has undermined the material foundations of distinctively local forms of communality and morality. Furthermore, and in contrast to traditional labourist ideals, it is framed by the idea that welfarism can only embed further these problems. More broadly, the paper contributes to calls, especially from within neo-Gramscian scholarship by the likes of Jessop and Hall for example, for understanding of the moral dimensions of neoliberalism as a hegemonic project, an aim that hitherto has not been adequately ethnographically explored.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how and in what ways older, foreign residents living in Ubud, Bali, engage with contradictory moral regimes in the context of racial inequalities, lifestyle priorities and generational change within Balinese society.

Paper long abstract:

Increasing numbers of older, foreign migrants and retirees are settling in a range of prominent tourist destinations in Southeast Asia, in ways that reflect geometries of power and privilege on a global scale. This paper specifically examines how older, Western residents make sense of racial hierarchies and inequalities in the context of relations with Balinese employees and a modern service infrastructure of cafes and restaurants in Ubud, Bali. Specifically I examine the ways in which such residents engage with contradictory moral regimes that reflect a desire to downplay the virtues of white agency, yet place the self at the forefront of narratives of life and lifestyle in Bali. The ability of older, Western residents to spatially manage such concerns, I argue, is complicated by generational change within Balinese society. Attempts by these residents to contain such aspects of change in static imaginings of a traditional, Balinese other provides a basis to understand how ill-defined or ignored forms of symbolic pollution might transform racialised social structures into overt acts of racism.