「脆弱」的照顧：中國養老院中的身體、情感與倫理困境

The Vulnerability of Eldercare: Bodies, Affects, and Ethical Dilemmas in China's Nursing Homes

本研究通過對中國江蘇省某地兩家養老院的田野調查，考察了護理員們的日常工作情境。養老院中的老年人照顧工作，在以經濟發展與健康生機為主導價值的當代中國社會中，被視為「骯髒工作」，而當前主要依賴一群在社會轉型中處於底層的中老年女性，即「阿姨」。我通過呈現「骯髒工作」中具體的身體、情感經驗和一系列倫理衝突，指出照顧工作本身同時蘊含著「照顧」、「褫奪」、「傷害」的脆弱性質。通過考察護理員們的勞動生涯，本研究揭示了中國的市場化改革、城鄉區隔、性別政治等諸種結構性因素的交織影響，它們也共同形塑了這些「阿姨」的自我認同與照顧實作。

Based on ethnographic research in two nursing homes in Jiangsu Province, this paper describes the work situations of the care workers. Reflecting upon the concept of ＂dirty work,＂ I argue that in contemporary China, where economic development and vitality become the dominant social values, the declined and disabled elders in nursing homes are generally regarded as dirty and contaminated, thus stuck in a paradoxical condition: they are being cared but in a zone of social abandonment. The current elderly care work mainly relies on a group of middle-aged and elderly women which are called ＂anties＂, who have been confined to the bottom during the social transformation. The precarious conditions of those underclass care workers must be understood in the context of China's socialist market reform, rural-urban divide and gender politics, which shape their identities and care practices, and vice versa. Furthermore, the affective, bodily experiences, and the ethical dilemmas in care practices reveal the vulnerability of eldercare, which may lead to deprivation, even violence.