Making moral selves through comparison

Narratives of moral decline and the modern virtuous self among middle-class older adults in Nepal

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2264005
AutoresPaola Tiné (0000-0002-4069-441X, Department of Anthropology Victoria University of Wellington Wellington New Zealand, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume53
Fascículo3
Data de publicação2025-04-08
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEthos (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0091-2131 • E-ISSN: 1548-1352
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/etho.70005
OpenAlexW4409309326
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas40

During fieldwork among older adults in middle-class families in the city of Bhaktapur (2018-2019), I recurrently came across comparative narratives of moral decline, depicting a stark contrast between the present time and a mythical past where ageing parents were treated "as gods." In this paper, I analyze how, through acts of comparisons involving the weighing of opportunities between the past and the present and between difficulties facing parents and children, older people define their "moralities of expectation," through which intimate politics of giving and taking are weighed against perceptions of hardship in the context of precarious middle-class livelihoods. I suggest that comparison functions as a social practice with epistemological and affective connotations and that by comparing with real and imagined others, older people validate themselves as virtuous by anchoring to fluid and ever-changing social systems. Ultimately, these findings shed light on how moral selfhoods are shaped through comparison with models of the past and the present, revealing how it is in this careful and purposeful evaluation of one's own behavior and that of others that social change is negotiated and the broader ethos revised

Class (philosophy) · Economics · Epistemology · Middle class · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · Virtuous circle and vicious circle · Aging and Gerontology Research · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics