Project

The politics of care and defining meanings of good-life: Elderly women’s community economies in rural Japan

This research project explores ‘the politics of care and meanings of good life: Elderly women’s community economies in rural Japan’ as a part of EU Horizon 2020 programme: Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity – Innovative Training Networks (WEGO-ITN).

In rural Japan, there are many challenges emanated from ageing and depopulation with unprecedented pace. However, collective practices led by elderly women provide various care to meet needs for themselves but also others in challenging situations. Given this situation, this project aims to clarify how elderly women in rural Japan conduct collective care practices to deal with difficulties in everyday practices and to enrich well-beings for humans and non-humans. To do so, Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) is applied to capture complex interactions among elderly women and other various actors from which different dimensions of gender, age, and rurality are intersecting. Furthermore, the theoretical ground of this project also draws on community economies theory and emerging other concepts within FPE, such as multispecies commoning, ethics of care and embodiment, and socio-ecological intersectional space.