Collective responsibility for dependent people

Abstract

In the previous chapter, we looked at the collectivism that underlies the social organization of daily living but did not consider how those societies and communities attempted to provide care for their dependent members and whether or not they were based on a collectivist approach. This forms the central focus of the present chapter, and a similar mix of ethnographic and historical evidence will be used to consider how (or whether) underlying ideologies of collective responsibility have been brought to bear on the tasks and forms of caring.