Caring claims and the relational self across time: grandmothers overcoming reproductive crises in rural China

Bruckermann, Charlotte

doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12611

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Rice's work is an example of how political, legal, and economic shifts can produce intimate contestation over how care in various forms constitutes relational personhood. Charlotte Bruckermann (), writing about grandmothers’ care of their grandchildren in rural China, analyzes similar contestations in relation to a different set of political, legal, and economic shifts.…”

Section: Relationality Subjectivity and Mediationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

Tamarkin

2018

American Anthropologist

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This essay reviews work produced in predominantly US cultural anthropology publications throughout 2017. It asks: What makes an anthropological inquiry timely, what sorts of relationalities command anthropological attention, and to what end? Noting our ongoing methodological commitment to long-term ethnography alongside increasingly important online forums for reaching broader publics and responding quickly to emerging issues, it expands the range of work surveyed to include some online-only short essays alongside the larger collection of traditionally published research articles. Characterized by empathic inquiry, frequently drawing on years of ethnographic and personal experience with the places, people, and other entities that we write about, and often attentive to histories at multiple scales, cultural anthropology of this moment, however published, grapples with dark times while it also offers ways of imagining other, better futures and ways of being in relation to others. Two thematic clusters organize this essay: the first considers temporality alongside mobility and sovereignty, and the second considers relationality alongside subjectivity and mediation. Together, all of these concerns-that are both of the moment and long standing-build a varied body of work that grapples with the interrelationalities that constitute power, place, and possibility. I argue that what makes an anthropological inquiry timely is the extent to which it is relationally informed and attuned to care for worlds that we inhabit and imagine, together. [year in review, sociocultural anthropology, temporality, mobility, sovereignty, relationality, subjectivity, mediation] RESUMEN Este ensayo revisa el trabajo producido en publicaciones de antropología cultural predominantemente estadounidenses durante 2017. Pregunta: ¿Qué hace la investigación antropológica oportuna, y qué tipos de relacionalidades comandan la atención antropológica, y con qué fin? Notando nuestro compromiso metodológico continuo con una etnografía de largo plazo junto a foros en línea cada vez más importantes para llegar a públicos más amplios y respondiendo rápidamente a cuestiones emergentes, expande el rango del trabajo evaluado para incluir algunos ensayos cortos sólo en línea junto a la mayor colección de artículos de investigación publicados tradicionalmente. Caracterizada por una investigación empática, frecuentemente extrayendo de años de experiencia etnográfica y personal con los lugares, la gente, y otras entidades sobre las que escribimos, y a menudo atentos a historias a escalas múltiples, la antropología cultural de este momento, independientemente de cómo sea publicada, lucha contra tiempos oscuros mientras ofrece maneras de imaginar otros, mejores futuros y formas de estar en relación con otros. Dos grupos temáticos organizan este ensayo: el primero considera temporalidad junto a movilidad y soberanía, y el segundo considera relacionalidad junto a subjetividad y mediación. Juntas, todas estas preocupaciones-que son tanto del momento como de larga d...

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Section: Relationality Subjectivity and Mediationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

Tamarkin

2018

American Anthropologist

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“…Family members’ investment in the son’s marriage condenses their existential worries about the future of the son, the family, and ultimately themselves. This speaks to the idea, put forward by Charlotte Bruckermann (2017), that intimate care for others can further aspirations of selfhood. While giving gender implies the suspension of self-focus, it can also be a self-interested act.…”

Section: Portrait One: “Will Lin Ever Marry?”mentioning

confidence: 93%

Rescuing Masculinity: Giving Gender in the Wake of China’s Marriage Squeeze

Driessen

Sier

2019

Modern China

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China’s marriage squeeze poses a profound challenge to the construction of masculinity in rural regions, where marriage continues to play an important role in the production of gender identities, marking manhood and its virtues. What are the consequences when men fail to marry and to assert respected male seniority? We show that in the context of China’s imbalanced sex ratio, family members attempt to rescue or restore the dignity of their sons and brothers by “giving gender,” gestures of care that are aimed to bolster gender authenticity and thereby strengthen a young man’s marriage prospects. By discussing both the intergenerational and intragenerational dynamics of gender collaboration within the family, we furthermore challenge existing studies that project gender antagonism in the wake of radical demographic change, while complicating the image of China’s rural bachelors as social outcasts.

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“…There is also the floating population of grandparents who leave their rural hometown to migrate to the cities to help look after grandchildren. These differences reflect the pressure on parents in the highly competitive contemporary workplace (see Bruckermann 2017; Wang in press). The interest in grandparenting as a contribution to childcare has also become extended to studies of relative reproductive success in human evolution (e.g.…”

Section: The Rise Of Grandparentingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grandparenting as the resolution of kinship as experience

Miller

Garvey

2022

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article argues that a population of relatively affluent retired people in a small Irish town have employed the possibilities of grandparenting to resolve many of the tensions of contemporary kinship. This includes the tension between the obligations of prescriptive relationships as against the voluntarism of friendship. This is considered against a background shift in kinship studies towards a distinction between kinship as a category and kinship as experience. Kinship as experience often now comprises a series of deep fluctuations during the life course. Experience is also extended by the growth in life expectancy. This makes it still more important that the legacy of an individual's prior experiences of kinship may be partially resolved through the experience of grandparenting. The profound consequences of grandparenting lie not in the relationship to the grandchildren but in the possibilities that grandparenting offers to recalibrate all other kinship relations. These include the relationship with one's own children, the relationship with partners, the legacy of one's prior experience of being a parent, and even the memory of the way one was parented when a child.

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Caring claims and the relational self across time: grandmothers overcoming reproductive crises in rural China

Cited by 16 publications

References 43 publications

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

Rescuing Masculinity: Giving Gender in the Wake of China’s Marriage Squeeze

Grandparenting as the resolution of kinship as experience

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