Paper short abstract:

End of Life Doulas (EOL) are a rapidly-growing field of end of life workers, advocating for clients, promoting death literacy, vigiling with the dying, and offering support for after-death rituals. Filling gaps left by corporate funeral homes, EOLD care is offered to isolated and lonely people also.

Paper long abstract:

At end of life 'care' has been precariously situated in western societies between unpaid family member work or through strangers in aged care or hospital facilities. Currently, care in the private home is being encouraged, as medical and aged care homes beds are in high demand; this trend will continue as the silver tsumani begins for the Baby Boomer generation. End of Life Doulas (EOLD) are end of life workers who specialise in advance planning, advocating for and supporting those at end of life (life-limiting or terminal diagnosis), vigiling with the dying, and offering grief support, after-death body care, and funeral information and/or support. Arguably EOLDs fill a gap in care that has been the purview of family in the past - in globalised and neoliberal modern times where 'family' is often dispersed, fragmented, or absent, and 'care' may be self-administered by individuals to themselves. EOLDs offer a knowledge base and skillset - sometimes paid, sometimes not - that not only offers care to the lonely and isolated at end of life, but support and a social model of learning and information transfer for friends and family around a person at end of life. EOLDs actively model and transfer death literacy and compassionate community formation as an inherent aspect of the work of care offered. The practice of doing and knowing in end of life care permits people to re-learn the language, processes, and understandings of death and dying, enriching individuals, and nurturing more informed choices for community members.

Paper short abstract:

Care links continuity, resistance and optimism among First Nations Victorians. Care is essential to future flourishing envisaged in the revitalisation of Indigenous cultures. It critiques western values and demonstrates fierce femininity. An anthropology of care reveals much about being and relating

Paper long abstract:

Based on my PhD research among First Nations People in Victoria, I discuss how care is a key action linking continuity, resistance and optimism. Caring as the embodiment and performance of kinship relations is essential to notions of Aboriginality. It has been crucial to surviving colonisation and is a fundamental action through which the continuity with ancestors is practiced. Care is central to realising the future flourishing envisaged in the revitalisation of Indigenous practices and ways of being. Cycles of care link the beginning and end of life and connect the generations across time and space. Caring involves relationships between the living and dead, and humans, animals, plants and spirits. The dormant potentials of spirits housed in places are accessed through actions of caring.

I situate my discussion within histories of state removal and 'care' of children and discuss recent moves by Aboriginal controlled organisations to take control of responsibility for children placed in Out Of Home Care. Care is resistance, a critique of western neoliberal values of individualism and the resulting social isolation. Care is strong, demonstrating fierce femininity, demonstrated by the actions of mothers and grandmothers fighting for their children. From this analysis I suggest how an anthropology of care may illuminate fundamental aspects of being and relating.

Paper short abstract:

I look through the lens of care as task - at 'the carer', sometimes paid, sometimes not, in high demand but doing a job no one wants - to interrogate the concept of 'care', and recent interest in developing an 'anthropology of care'. What value lies in this anthropological approach?

Paper long abstract:

Care is not only polysemous, it is a contronym: it may refer to a highly valued relational attribute, a social aspiration; or to demeaning tasks or a social burden. To be 'a caring person' might be an insult or a compliment. And yet this word vies for the ubiquitous place that 'God', 'love' and 'culture' have in our contemporary vocabulary.

I look through the lens of care as task - at 'the carer', sometimes paid, sometimes not, in high demand but doing a job no one wants. What does the ambivalence towards care as value, care as relationship, care as role tell us about those things it is often opposed to: work, uncaring, careless? What can we learn by substituting this term with its synonyms: attentiveness, wariness, safe, controlled? Interrogation of this complex term, and the ways in which this impacts on care work, helps identify the social and economic contradictions, and the stigmas (gender, ethnic, age) associated with acts of care or being caring. I will argue that this contronym is of integral use to neoliberal policy, and the shaping of the neoliberal subject. What does this say to those who would develop an anthropology of care?

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the value of the concept of care in analysing aspects of the health realm in Papua New Guinea. Through ethnography of TB treatment and patient-health staff relations in the Lihir islands I question whether concepts of care, or tnanie, shape health practices.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the value of the concept of care in analysing aspects of the health realm in Papua New Guinea. Care has recently been conceptualised in anthropology as critical to understanding work in the health sector as moral and relational practice of embodied compassion (Buch, Kleinman, Mol). In previous work I explored a concept most closely resembling 'care' in relation to ageing and death, the Lihirian term tnanie or nurturance: a highly valued moral practice which recognises continuing social connectedness. Papua New Guinea's health sector manages a high burden of illness under conditions of economic strain with limited resources, and a key focus on acute and curative medicine. The country is facing an emergency situation of Tuberculosis (TB) infection and growing disease resistance. In response, much discourse is laying blame with non-compliant patients and problematic 'cultural beliefs'. In this paper I ask how reframing the provision of TB diagnosis and treatment through the lens of "care" might be analytically constructive. TB treatment involves the long-term provision of daily medication: a healthcare relationship unusual in the acute curative focus of health in PNG. Through ethnography of TB treatment and patient-health staff relations in the Lihir islands I question whether concepts of care, or tnanie, shape health practices. And further, how might employing the concept of care allow for the re-examination of relationships between health staff and patients?

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between archetypical depictions of people providing care in a person's own home, and stories of actual caregivers, kin and non-kin, paid or not. I identify experiences that both reproduce and disrupt personal and societal values associated with care.

Paper long abstract:

How does caregiving augment or deflate a caregiver's perceived sense of self worth? How/why is this impacted by kin relatedness, receiving an income, or the reasons for becoming a carer?

Analysis of recent films reveals the emergence of a carer archetype. Those caring for someone who is critically/terminally ill, whether or not they are kin, are provided with culturally-recognised opportunities to find meaning and value. Characters with a questionable past redeem themselves through the heroic act of care. They may even be seen to bring out a previously obscured authenticity in the person for whom they care (an assumption behind the notion of 'person-centred care').

This contrasts with stories from women engaged in dementia care, who see care as their kin-based responsibility. They have a complex relationship to their carer role, reporting cycles of losing and finding their sense of self, and often feeling devalued. This perception of being devalued can come from the person for whom they care, who may not have the capacity to be appreciative; by other kin uncomfortable/guilty with the distribution of the responsibility of care; or by a society inadequately equipped to support family carers.

Through contrasting archetypes as well as the stories of people, professional and informal, who provide care in a person's own home, anthropology, through its ability to reveal social, emotional and psychic structures, can illuminate the conditions within which care does or does not accumulate personal and social value.

Paper short abstract:

Among transnational Papua New Guineans, caring tasks are valued as a matter of private relational kinship. This paper brings the state into analytical focus by examining the 'soft' regulation of the 'private' production and circulation of care between Australia and PNG.

Paper long abstract:

A common argument found among Papua New Guineans in Australia regarding transnational care for the elderly is that the domain of kinship is the appropriate realm for such care. According to this vision, it is in the domestic moral economy that value is created through virtuous care work. Thus, transnational Papua New Guineans often seek to avoid state funded services, preferring to look after their own aged kin and friends.

In the light of this vision of caring as involving private relational kinship, this paper brings the state and the public sphere back into analytical focus as 'soft' regulators of this predominantly 'private' transnational production and circulation of care between Australia and PNG.

We argue that an overly exclusive distinction between the state and private caring oversimplifies the moral economy of caring in transnational communities and replicates unproductive dualisms of cultural and nation state difference. We look at how carers have encountered the regulatory regimes (concerning carers' visas, transfers of the dead and sick etc) of both Australia and PNG and how state agents contribute to the creation of value in this moral economy.

Transnational Papua New Guinean carers engage in complex work to traverse the regulatory regimes of both states. In turn, state officials, work to respond to the demands for them to care about the carers' concerns. This work by carers and state officials is part of transnational care relations and creates opportunities both for more unified, and at times more fragmented, fields of caring to emerge.

Paper short abstract:

In Australian residential aged care and residential care services for children, friction can occur between managing risk and what is valued in care work. The anthropology of care, and its methods, helps us attended to this and opportunities for alignment, contributing to insights and change.

Paper long abstract:

Research by the Brotherhood of St Laurence on residential aged care and residential care services for children (Out of Home Care residential units) aims to achieve system change, practice change and insights into service performance in Australia. It is the encompassing nature of the concept of care that helps us think about these two areas of research together. Prompted by insights from the anthropology of care, we look at what is valued at the institutional level, as evidenced by auditing and accountability structures designed to manage risk; and what is valued (implicitly and explicitly) in care work. In the context of scarce staff-time, there can be friction between these two value sets. As Tsing's (2005) use of 'friction' illustrates, such sites may hold opportunities for alignment or compelling cases for change. The sensitivity with which anthropologists can approach such friction, or articulate the values of care (e.g. Mol 2008), is due in no small part to the affordances of ethnographic enquiry. It is by embedding researchers within service delivery, rather than as objective outsiders, that we are well placed to learn about formal institutions and the care work that goes on in them. Drawing attention to the frictions and opportunities for alignment can yield insights into service performance while enabling system change and practice change.