Buch Elana D
Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, 114 Macbride Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242-1332.
Am Ethnol. 2013 Nov 1;40(4):637-650. doi: 10.1111/amet.12044.
In paid home care-one of the fastest-growing occupations in the United States-low-wage workers help elderly clients living in their own homes remain independent by embodying and then reproducing the elders' lifetimes of experience. Exploring the bodily and moral consequences of everyday home care practices in Chicago, I show that in this context, sustaining independent personhood depended on and intensified unequal social relations. To sustain clients' personhood, workers developed a deeply embodied empathy that enabled them to imagine and re-create the elders' social and sensory worlds. Home care practices involved unreciprocated circulations of bodily experience that led some workers to feel that the needs and preferences of their clients took priority over their own comfort and well-being. Care workers' bodily practices thus became one way in which social hierarchies shaped individual subjectivities and came to seem morally legitimate.
在付费家庭护理领域——美国发展最快的职业之一——低薪工人通过体现并再现老年人一生的经历，帮助居住在自己家中的老年客户保持独立。通过探究芝加哥日常家庭护理实践所带来的身体和道德影响，我发现，在这种情况下，维持独立人格依赖于不平等的社会关系，并加剧了这种不平等。为了维持客户的人格，工人们产生了一种深刻的身体同理心，使他们能够想象并重新创造老年人的社会和感官世界。家庭护理实践涉及身体体验的单向流通，这使得一些工人觉得客户的需求和偏好优先于他们自己的舒适和幸福。因此，护理人员的身体实践成为了社会等级制度塑造个体主体性并使其在道德上看似合理的一种方式。
