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Senior Volunteering in Service to Community Elders in Shanghai: Bringing Together Agendas for Productive Aging and Community-Based Social Support for the Aged in China

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Abstract

In this article, I examine recent ethnographic data on the subjective meanings of volunteering expressed by Chinese older adult volunteers working within community-based non-governmental-organization (NGO) projects supporting aging in place for ailing elders and their family caregivers in Shanghai, China. In examining this data, I analyze what older adults’ community-based volunteering means to them in the context of broader questions about the potential for bringing together gerontological agendas for productive aging and community-based social support for the aged. I argue that these Chinese older adult volunteers bring special strengths to community volunteering in support of the aged, and that their choice to serve community members of advanced age also brings distinctive benefits to them as volunteers. This pairing of older volunteers with senior community recipients has demonstrated excellent potential, as well as some important challenges.

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Acknowledgments

Support for this project was provided by a Fulbright China Studies Senior Scholars Research Award #1083 and a sabbatical leave granted by the University of Vermont. The project was facilitated by scholarly affiliation with the Fudan-Harvard Medical Anthropology Research Collaborative in the Sociology Department at Fudan University. The author wishes to thank the volunteers for sharing their experiences and their NGOs for welcoming me to study their valuable work. I am also grateful for feedback on drafts of this article provided Hong Zhang and Elizabeth Wade. Any errors or omissions are the author’s alone.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Vermont, 515 Williams Hall, 72 University Place, Burlington, VT, 05405, USA

    Jeanne Shea

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Shea, J. Senior Volunteering in Service to Community Elders in Shanghai: Bringing Together Agendas for Productive Aging and Community-Based Social Support for the Aged in China. Ageing Int 42, 205–235 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-016-9270-6

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