ABSTRACT

Theoretical debates around the study of ‘kinning’, or emergent intimacies, have usually centred on parent–child relationships, while the later stages of life have largely been ignored. The author suggests that one of the fundamental dilemmas in later-life-kinning lies in the ‘means-ends dichotomy’ and argues that ‘fiction’ may help people to creatively tackle this dichotomy. Ethnographic data were collected from Sri Lanka, where the elderly are prompted to rearrange and/or extend their care relationships, both within and beyond the boundaries of family, against the backdrop of dynamic socio-demographic changes. Evolving in a relatively informal fashion, these activities to rearrange and extend care relationships often involve the direct/indirect mediation of money. Undertaking a detailed case study of an elderly woman, Dorothy, and her caregiver-cum-’kin’ Piyadasa, the author aims to illustrate how fiction enables us to face unfathomable situations or fundamental contradictions – in this case, a means-ends dichotomy. Contrary to the assertion that fiction in the process of kinning can help one define or ‘discover’ a destined, permanent relationship to form a ‘pseudo-biological’ relationship as suggested in previous research on adoption, this paper demonstrates how fiction can help us dwell in uncertainty and gradually reshape our relationships to one another.

摘要

有关“亲属关系”或新出现的亲密关系研究的理论辩论通常集中在亲子关系上，而生活的后期阶段却被很大程度上忽略了。作者认为，晚年生活的基本难题之一是“手段-目的二分法”，并认为“小说”可以帮助人们创造性地解决这一二分法。人种学数据来自斯里兰卡，在社会人口动态变化的背景下，老年人被提示在家庭范围内和家庭外重新安排和/或扩展他们的照护关系。这些以相对非正式的方式发展的，重新安排和扩展护理关系的活动通常涉及金钱的直接/间接调解。对一名老年妇女Dorothy进行详细的案例研究，以及她的照顾者暨“亲戚”皮亚达萨（Piyadasa），作者的目的是说明小说如何使我们能够面对不可思议的情况或根本性的矛盾-在这种情况下，是一种手段与手段的二分法。与断言在虚构过程中可以帮助人们定义或“发现”预定的，永久的关系以形成“伪生物”关系的主张相反，正如先前关于收养的研究所建议的那样，本文证明了虚构如何可以帮助我们充满不确定性，并逐步重塑我们彼此之间的关系。