Japan's aging society: The crisis of care and the hope of prevention /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Ricart, Shana Noelle, author.
Imprint:2015.
Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2015
Description:1 electronic resource (229 pages)
Language:English
Format: E-Resource Dissertations
Local Note:School code: 0330
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10773155
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:University of Chicago. degree granting institution.
ISBN:9781321899795
Notes:Advisors: John Kelly Committee members: Michael Fisch; Gavin Hougham; James Ketelaar.
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Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 76-11(E), Section: A.
English
Summary:In an attempt to drive down national spending on a generous and comprehensive Long-term Care Insurance (LTCI) system (Kaigo Hoken), available to all persons aged 65 and over, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has promoted gerontological research into old-age disease prevention and health promotion, the development of prevention programs and services among local municipal governments, and established national policies organized around the prevention of the need for care and enrollment in LTCI. Through an ethnographic analysis of the newly formed Care-Prevention System ( Kaigo Yobo Seido), I explore how health, self, and society are experienced and understood by its proponents and participants, including gerontologists, government employees, program managers, and seniors.Care-prevention, as the name implies, is inextricably linked with the concept and practice of care in Japan today. The nation has been described as facing an Aging Society Crisis (shoshi korei ka shakai mondai), a crisis of an excess of care and the inability to support the demand. During this signal moment of healthcare policy change (the transition of policy focus from the provisioning of care to that of forestalling the need for care), the concept of "healthy aging" and how it can be achieved has gained precedence.
Healthy aging in Japan's care-prevention initiative is associated with continued activity, namely social engagement with others. If one remains active - mentally, physically, and especially socially - then one can remain healthy until the last days of one's life. In the ontology of old age forming here, what is stimulated through activity is a kind of vital energy latent within all humans. This vital energy emerges from within and is exchanged through human-social relations and with the surrounding living environment. The prevention of care in old age depends upon the stimulation of this latent desire for active living and sociality. Thus, the care-prevention movement is readily involved in community-building, aiming to form ideal societies that are marked by the balanced flow of individuals, commerce, and nature, forming a kind of self-perpetuating organic whole. If we follow the ontology of old age care-prevention being popularized in Japan today, once one is no longer able to stay active, one can no longer participate in sociality, and one loses the basis of one's humanity - active social interrelations. The senior in need of care is figured as a non-human thing more than a person, as the treatment of the in-need-of-care senior and concern attributed to him or her focuses on fostering the senior's smooth interactions with the surrounding living environments (promoting barrier free living) and incorporating assistive technologies into their care regiment.