Asset or Burden: The Ethical Calculus of Care in Ulaanbaatar’s Urban Margins

Rebecca  Empson; Elizabeth  Fox

Asset or Burden: The Ethical Calculus of Care in Ulaanbaatar’s Urban Margins

Data publikacji: 2021

Prace Etnograficzne, 2021, Tom 49 Numer 1-2, s. 85 - 101

https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.21.006.14128

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Tytuły

Asset or Burden: The Ethical Calculus of Care in Ulaanbaatar’s Urban Margins

Abstrakt

How do family relations change in the move from rural to urban living? What are the impacts of urbanisation on the domestic? Drawing on the ethnography of two families on the outskirts of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, this chapter tackles the intersections of urbanisation and intergenerational care, charting the effects of rural-urban migration on family lives. Although their family structures differ, Tuya and Duya each find themselves shouldering the burden of being urban female breadwinners. To navigate conditions of profound economic precarity, they approach their families through a lens of economic-cum-moral strategizing, which we term a form of ‘ethical calculus’. In the city, money becomes synonymous with care and family members are categorised according to a scale of asset-to-burden based on their capacity to support or increase the breadwinner’s load. A focus on the work involved in such forms of care reveals a qualitatively different approach to family ties in urban Mongolia that pulls people in two directions. The first is the reconfiguration of marginal populations’ relationship with the state to one that equates care with money. The second is the atomising pressure that life on Ulaanbaatar’s margins puts on the hopes and capacities of household members.

Słowa kluczowe

care, ethics, female breadwinners, interiority and exteriority, urban living, rural-urban migration, state, economy, home, pensions

Bibliografia

Pobierz bibliografię

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Informacje

Informacje: Prace Etnograficzne, 2021, Tom 49 Numer 1-2, s. 85 - 101

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.21.006.14128

Typ artykułu: Oryginalny artykuł naukowy

Tytuły:

Polski:

Asset or Burden: The Ethical Calculus of Care in Ulaanbaatar’s Urban Margins

Angielski:

Asset or Burden: The Ethical Calculus of Care in Ulaanbaatar’s Urban Margins

Autorzy

Rebecca Empson

University College, London, Great Britain

Elizabeth Fox

University College, London, Great Britain

Publikacja: 2021

Status artykułu: Otwarte

Licencja: CC BY-NC-ND

Udział procentowy autorów:

Rebecca Empson (Autor) - 50%

Elizabeth Fox (Autor) - 50%

Korekty artykułu:

Języki publikacji:

Angielski

Liczba wyświetleń: 776

Liczba pobrań: 508

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