Fnu Caihuajia

With a focus on elders in rural communities in northwestern China, this project investigates care practices and changing family dynamics in the wider context of China’s ongoing modernization efforts. Specifically, this research looks at how rural Tibetan elders are compelled to live up to new expectations while engaging with different features of modern life, including the opportunities offered by modern medical care. The project reveals the interplay of different relationships between and within nuclear families and the ways in which sibling relations are entangled with other kinds of ties in complex ways, especially in the circulation of care. The work examines the nexus between care and the family, especially how care practices and family dynamics are responding to new social realities.