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- Convenors:
-
Rozafa Berisha
(University of Prishtina)
Alexandra Ciocanel (University of York)
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- Discussant:
-
Karen Sykes
(University of Manchester)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
While some scholars consider 'generation' as productive for the study of social organisation and transformation, its critics view it as a homogenising category lacking specificity. Is generation still a fruitful lens to examine social change and reproduction in late capitalism?
Long Abstract:
As material and moral transformations reshape inter and intra-generational relations, new ways of understanding 'generations' emerge. The worldwide financial crisis of 2008 reconfigured autonomy and dependence in social reproduction by making younger cohorts more dependent on the care and assets of older kin. Climate change continues to pose questions of justice and environmental responsibility in generational terms. The Covid-19 pandemic, likewise, turned 'generations' into a locus of obligation and responsibilities of care.
Given the continued importance of generations, this panel invites contributions and reflections on generation as an analytical and emic category. Earlier anthropological studies noted how rapid shifts in the postcolonial and global economy meant that generation became one of the most prominent cleavages (Durham 2000), focusing on youth and children as a point of inquiry into intergenerational rupture and transformation (e.g., De Boeck and Honwana 2005). More recent ethnographic attention however has been guided by initiatives of generational solidarity, continuity and social reproduction (e.g., Narotzky 2021). In light of these continuing discussions in anthropological scholarship, this panel asks if generation is still a fruitful lens to examine contemporary social processes, transformations and reproduction in neoliberal capitalism, opening up questions such as: How have intergenerational relations been transformed in late capitalism? What anxieties and hopes shape relations between generations and social reproduction? How does generation intersect with other social divisions and arrangements such as race, gender, class and ethnicity?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Arpan Roy (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing from fieldwork in Palestine and based on Héritier’s observation that having a “fixed” position in a set of possible siblings is an unchangeable condition of life, I argue that generation is among the last remaining areas of kinship that cannot be remade by technoscience nor ontological reimagining.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates the responsibility that comes with belonging to a particular generation. Long a topic of interest to anthropologists in the context of kinship obligations, my paper takes an alternate route by considering generational responsibility in the family through the lens of phenomenology. Drawing from fieldwork in Palestine and based on Françoise Héritier’s observation that having a “fixed” position in a set of possible siblings is an unchangeable condition of life, I argue that generation is among the last remaining areas of kinship that cannot be remade by technoscience nor ontological reimagining. That is to say, according to Héritier, no known kinship system in the world allows a given ego to move up or down temporally in the order into which one is born. Stopping short of biological determinism, I nonetheless take this unchangeable reality of kinship to explore how ethical life is organized by the facticity of generation, here by being born in a fixed kinship order.
Miguel Moniz (Universidade de Lisboa)
Paper short abstract:
Tropes of "generation" and "generational assimilation" have been a useful strategy for communities of racialized migrant laborers to discuss and effect social mobility. The terms however comprise a flawed unit of analysis to critique and frame inequality and marginality in migrant labor contexts.
Paper long abstract:
Academic studies of Portuguese and other migrant communities in the US have used "generation" to contemplate socio-economic and social mobility using terms like "integration," "adaptation," and etc. —usually examining an individual’s temporal distance from their first migrant ancestor to correlate with greater levels of “assimilation”. The academic language both produces and replicates folk terms that discuss longitudinal place making efforts in terms of generational change. It is necessary to recognize participants categories as important variables, however, "generation," "generational assimiliation" and "generational change" as part of an analytical concept obscures what are ongoing decisions by migrant founded communities to continue to perform assimilability narratives that structure privilege and social mobility in white nationalist political power processes. Presenting ethnography based on research from longitudinal migration from Portugal to New England, this paper critiques "generation" by examining migrant labor negotiations for legitimacy and civic power that depend on mutual multi-generational collective identities to advocate for belonging and influence. The reliance on "generation" replicates unequal discourses as older cohorts define their belonging through political discourse that marginalizes newer arrivals. It erases and reduces the complexity of the experiences of those within migrant labor communities and falsely presents a picture that tells a tale of inevitable (generational) progress; rather than provide a framework to better understand the agencies necessary to effect social change, or how political power and privilege is negotiated in collective place-making and racialized social mobility strategies.
Aglaia Chatjouli (University of the Aegean) Venetia Kantsa (University of the Aegean)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing from research in Greece on the biosocial experience of aging during the COVID-19 pandemic the paper aims to discuss how pre-existing care patterns and relations within and between generations are reproduced and/or shifted in light of generational tensions produced in the pandemic context.
Paper long abstract:
The Greek society has been studied and portrayed as characterized by stable bonds between generation members which nurture interdependent care relations (emotional, economic, practical, household). Ιn the context of the pandemic the “older generation” was targeted from the onset as the most vulnerable and “to be taken care of” by the state and by the younger generations. While the younger ones were advised to act responsibly in order to save the lives of the elders, the older generation was advised to stay home and in due course was given vaccine prioritization. Thus, during the last years different generations have become more visibly separated and more tangibly distinct in terms of vulnerability(ies), responsibility(ies), mobility(ies) and accessibility(ies). At the same time expert’s discourses and governmental measures have contributed to a homogenization of the different generations (defined by specific age limits), both in relation to an implied, within each generation uniformity, and in relation to the differences between generations. The aim of this paper is to discuss to what extend and in what ways pre-existing care patterns within and between generations are reproduced and/or shifted in light of the generational tensions produced in the pandemic (crisis) context, further reproducing dominant representations linked to the different generations and their relations or creating new ones. In other words, we ask what aspects of the pandemic crisis unfolding in the neoliberal context of care are seen to be having transformational power in the construction of generational difference and in intergenerational relations.
Shivangi Patel (Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi) Paro Mishra (Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi)
Paper short abstract:
The proposed paper complicates the conventional understanding of care flows and pitches the idea of reverse care flow between aging parents in India and their professional transnational migrant children to make a case for using life-course perspective in transnational migration research.
Paper long abstract:
The Longitudinal Aging Survey of India report of 2020 notes that increased transnational migration of young adults as professionals and rising lifespan has led to many elderly parents living alone. Although the concept of family and kin-based care in India has received considerable scholarly attention, transnational care-circulation, especially in the era of connected neo-liberal economies and increased migration and mobility, is an understudied topic. Recognizing that the lives of older people are entangled in transnational contexts and mobilities, the proposed paper moves beyond limited research on transnational kinning in India that focuses on how kin and care relations are sustained by adult migrant children for their ‘left-behind’ aging parents. Instead, it argues that even as elderly parents ‘age in place’, while their adult children seek mobility and livelihood across the globe, aging parents actively assume ‘kinning’ and caring responsibilities for their adult migrant children and grandchildren at critical junctures of their life. In doing so, this paper makes a case for life-course perspective to examine (re)making of kinship on the move and also counters the dominant understanding of aging as a debilitating dependent experience. Using ethnographic study of migrant professionals and their aging parents in India, this paper examines this reverse care flow, how it is transacted across borders and the various forms it assumes. It will unravel how transnational kinning is negotiated in the context of cultural practices, gendered identities, pandemic situations and the expanding use of digital modes of communication that shape kinship relations in a transnational context.
Alexandra Ciocanel (University of York)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the relations between parents and young adults as they shape mortgaged homeownership. It proposes the concept of inter-generational transfers as more adequate than "inter-household exchanges" for capturing aspirations for long-term accumulation in financial capitalism.
Paper long abstract:
Examining the financialisation of everyday life, various anthropologists have proposed households as a unit of analysis not only to refer to the important role attributed to households for the accumulation of financial capital but also to account for the increasing role of "inter-households exchanges". The latter is usually mobilised in order to challenge the primacy of individuals assumed in most commercial contractual relations by pointing to how various kin are used either as a social collateral when trying to access credit from a bank or contribute with money for mortgage down payment. Although this involves a critical adoption of the concept of household and various attempts to distance it from its operationalisation in economics' survey, still, I argue that this is a poor concept to fully capture the broader sociality of credit/debt relationships and their embeddedness in concerns about social reproduction as a long-term process. Drawing on ethnographic research on mortgages in Bucharest, in this paper I examine the important role played by parents in shaping young adult's access to the housing market. I argue that inter-generational transfers is a more useful concept reflecting a renewed relevance of generations in understanding accumulation as a long-term process for social reproducing and the shifting values of property and inheritance in financial capitalism.