Precarity, assemblages, and Indonesian elder care

Abstract

The provision (or failure) of care reflects and produces vulnerability in old age. Reliable and appropriate care widely affects the imagination of “good care” of older Indonesians in North Sulawesi. Yet, their striving for better life goes with the growing chronification of conditions and processes with unpredictable endings. Three factors shape such uncertainty in elder care in North Sulawesi: (1) unsustainable, fragile care arrangements; (2) progressive-degenerative non-communicable diseases and aging impairments; and (3) structural insecurity in elder care and health-care institutions. Older persons mitigate the degree of chronifying care uncertainty by expanding social spaces, but often in normatively less accepted ways.