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society but also of disaster in non-western contexts. In this way, the book offers two interrelated and new insights. First, authori- tarian regimes do not cut off the possibility of civic engagement. Second, civil society and civic engagement should be understood as based radically on context. These insights accomplish the goals Xu describes in the introduction. He convincingly shows how context (based on structure and situation) created and constrained opportunities for civic engagement after the earthquake.
However, the book also raises a few ques- tions. The first shortcoming of the book is the author’s use of cultural sociology. While there is technically nothing problematic about the theoretical framework and orienta- tion, it seems, at times, that what Xu concep- tualizes as cultural sociology is more about the sociology of culture. This theoretical muddying does not necessarily water down the insights contained in the book, nor is it an obstacle to the reader. Moreover, this book is a great resource for sociologists who study culture, because it seems as if Xu is borrowing from both frameworks with- out explicitly paying lip service. However, because those two orientations are not made obvious at the beginning of the book, Xu misses an opportunity to show how cul- tural sociology and the sociology of culture can both be used to understand a particular phenomenon.
Second, although the author conducted qualitative interviews, Xu only makes scant use of participants’ actual words. This leaves the reader wishing for more analysis of his interviews, or, at the least, more of a method- ological discussion of why he chose not to include more quotes from participants. The slightly unconventional presentation of data made the arguments and analysis a bit diffi- cult to follow.
Despite these two shortcomings, this book will appeal to those who study culture, polit- ical sociology, disasters, and civil society. Xu carefully threads together frameworks and arguments to illustrate civic engagement. To end my review of the book with Xu’s words: ‘‘the real problem is not about civil society per se but about the polity’’ (p. 201).
Care across Generations: Solidarity and Sacrifice in Transnational Families, by Kristin E. Yarris. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. 190 pp. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9781503602885.
LESLIE K. WANG University of Massachusetts-Boston Leslie.Wang@umb.edu
In recent decades, a growing strand of fem- inist research has explored the relationship between international migration, work, and family life, as economic inequality has caused millions of women to move from developing countries to more industrialized areas in search of employment. In the process of seek- ing work elsewhere, countless women have been forced to leave their children behind in the care of extended family members— typically grandmothers. Although numerous studies have examined this issue from the perspective of mothers who work abroad and their ‘‘left behind’’ children, few have made children’s caregivers in migrant send- ing countries front and center. This is the major contribution of Kristin Yarris’s Care Across Generations: Solidarity and Sacrifice in Transnational Families, a well-written and clearly argued ethnographic study of the experiences of grandmothers in Nicaragua who care for the offspring of adult transna- tional migrant daughters.
In Nicaragua, more than half of adult migrants are women in their 20s and 30s who are often forced to leave their young children in the care of their own mothers. Particularly after the 2008 global economic recession depleted local work opportunities, many have sought employment in the domestic service sectors of Costa Rica, Pana- ma, and the United States, where issues of economic inequality and illegality shape their experiences and limit the possibility of reuniting with their children. Due to kinship patterns in Nicaragua that are both matrifo- cal and patriarchal, childcare and the mainte- nance of family relations are understood to be a female domain. For the working-class and poor families highlighted in this book, fathers often play a peripheral role in the lives and care of their own offspring. Local gendered understandings construct men as
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incapable of maintaining fidelity and com- mitment in their relationships with women, thus decreasing their expected level of accountability toward their own children after mothers migrate. This further genders practices of global care circulation, as care- giving responsibilities flow solely between women on the maternal side, regardless of international borders.
Care across Generations is based on multiple in-depth interviews and ethnography that the author, an anthropologist, conducted over an extended period with 15 working- class grandmothers between their late 40s and mid-70s. All were serving as primary caregivers for the young children of adult daughters living on a long-term basis in oth- er countries. The book deftly explores how the global economic processes that have increased mother migration have also over- turned traditional expectations about the life course for those who stay behind. In oth- er words, international migration has led to a reversal of family-based responsibilities, as grandmothers who traditionally could expect to receive more care from their adult daughters during their elder years, known as la tercera edad (third age), find themselves responsible for the full-time care of young grandchildren for years at a time.
This book argues that care is a resource shared by women across borders, a process that links different generations through shared moral and cultural values. Through their caregiving, grandmothers reinforce the particular values of solidaridad (solidari- ty) and sacrifice in support of their migrant daughters’ precarious lives abroad. In Nicar- agua, the concept of solidaridad embodies a combination of empathetic feelings and moral action: emotional support and concern for the welfare of others that is shown through banding together in the face of exter- nal challenges. Mother migrants sacrifice by leaving their families behind to seek opportu- nity abroad while grandmother caregivers sacrifice by putting their own personal desires aside to care for young children. In this way, the author contends, the care of grandmothers is a moral practice that helps to regenerate the values of solidarity and sac- rifice within transnational families.
The book examines the caregiving experi- ences of grandmothers from a variety of angles. It takes a close look at the role of financial remittances that migrant mothers send back to their families to demonstrate how the realms of care and money are inter- twined. A predominant cultural stereotype in Nicaragua represents grandmother care- givers as self-centered opportunists who use financial remittances for their own material benefit. Challenging this view, the author demonstrates the emotional signifi- cance of money that is sent back, as consis- tent remittances are held to be a symbolic representation of the care of migrant moth- ers. Remittances uphold the values of soli- darity and sacrifice as grandmothers use them to maintain the well-being of grand- children, and grandchildren, in turn, are expected to perform their own part by doing well in school.
The author also explores the mental, emo- tional, and medical consequences on grand- mother caregivers through analyzing the cul- tural notion of pensando mucho (thinking too much), a type of chronic worry. Although some correlate it with depression, the chap- ter argues that this form of embodied dis- tress allows grandmothers to express their dissatisfaction with the structural conditions that have separated them from their adult daughters and their adult daughters from their own children, while still emphasizing the cultural value they are providing through their own caregiving.
In conclusion, this book deftly examines the tensions that underlie global care chains in a time of increasing economic inequality between nations. Even though the subject at hand was the issue of how grandmothers and their adult daughters work together to find childcare solutions, it would also have been useful to understand more about the fathers of these children and what they thought and felt about the situation. The book could have explored further the patriar- chal bargains that women make and the pos- sible challenges that they could make to the existing structure. Nonetheless, this book presents a useful, unique addition to the scholarly literature on gender and carework in a globalized era.
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