"Living Care-fully: Understanding Interdependence in Livelihoods through Inter-generational Relationships in northern Ghana"

This talk will explore the potential contribution of a feminist ethics of care to livelihoods approaches. I argue that autonomy and independence frame our current approaches to understanding how people support themselves, obscuring the interdependent nature of connections that found our lives. Drawing on fieldwork in rural northern Ghana, I will explore interdependencies by focusing on the experiences of women engaged in intergenerational relationships as they encounter emerging dependencies associated with ageing and illness. I will briefly discuss the unfolding negotiations of strategies between an elderly woman and her daughter-in-law, examining the challenges of producing a morning meal. I will then move to explore how married women face constraints from strong patriarchal values that require her to focus labour and resources on her husband and his family. However, illness in an elderly parent may compel a daughter to provide end of life care. Women then work to legitimize a reorganization of their strategies to ensure that they can meet the needs of an ailing parent. These stories demonstrate how women's lives are deeply connected to others and their strategies address the needs of others. They highlight the need for consideration of an ethics of care in livelihood approaches, where interdependencies, dependencies and vulnerabilities can be acknowledged for their foundational roles in shaping strategies.