ABSTRACT

Definitions of what constitutes care and the extent of informal care-giving are highly cultural (Tronto 1993; McDaid and Sassi 2001). Yet as the discussion around welfare regimes in western society in Chapter 2 has demonstrated, who cares and where that care takes place is also subject to varying perceptions of rights and responsibilities. Care, then, is shaped not only by cultural practice but also by political and economic circumstances that vary across space. This aim of this chapter is to consider how some of these dimensions of care are manifest within non-western societies. Its global coverage is by no means comprehensive, indeed, it would be impossible to do so in the space of one short chapter, rather the aim is to tease out some of the key factors that contribute to cultural and crossnational differences in the construction of care for older people and how these are affected by contemporary developments in society that operate across a range of scales from the local to the global.