Driving Miss Daisy

1
Driving Miss Daisy

• Suzanne England
• Carol Tosone

New York University
2
The Narrative Turn

• human observation interpretation vs social
  science explanation
• studying up vs swooping down
• absent subject unspoken subugated knowing
• micropolitics--the political in the personal
• character, plot, dramatic arch prosaic details
  reveal larger cultural moral narratives

3
Dependency Narratives

• Grateful, acquiescent patients altruistic
  caregivers
• Needing help is shameful
• Being cared for by non-kin is abandonment
• Dependency burden stress

4
Dependency Narratives

• A threshold event triggers caregiving
• only instrumental care is recognized
  compensable
• caregiving is a one-way transaction
• policy is to withhold supports to families
• families, especially women, are responsible for
  caregiving
• women provide relational care, men instrumental
  support

5
Counter-narrative

• Agency of the dependent person
• Reciprocity of caring
• Non-kin care is complex. Happy families are all
  alike every unhappy family is unhappy in its own
  way
• men can provide relational care

6
Hoke..

• a fine rich Jewish lady like you doan blong
  draggin up the steps of no bus luggin no
  grocery sto bags.
• It right to have somebody from the family
  looking after you.
• What you think I am Miz Daisy? some old
  somethin sittin up here doan know nothing bout
  how to do?
• how you know the way I see, less you lookin
  outta my eyes?
• Lemme hep you wid it.

7
Daisy

• Hes stealing from me.
• I dont like living this way! I have no
  privacy!
• Boolie will have me in perpetual care before Im
  cold.
• Im fine. I dont need a thing in the world.
• I didnt say I love him. I said he was handy.
• Stop talking to me!

8
Miss Daisys predicament

• Loss of independence
• Stigma of dependency
• No one to care for
• Diminishing sphere of control
• Aging, Jewish, white woman
• Loneliness

9
Psychologizing Daisy

• Assume fixed moral and personal development
• Behavior determined by individual traits
• Behavior determined by personal history and
  social status
• Define dilemma in instrumental terms
• Prescribe intervention

10
Prosaics

• seeing macropolitics in the micropolitical
  moments of their everyday execution.
• we see moral decisions made moment to moment
  by inexhaustibly complex characters in
  unrepeatable social situations.
• beyond what everyone already knows.

11
What the drama reveals

• Close and continuing contact can build trust and
  give meaning to life
• Daisy grows learns how to receive care
  gracefully
• Daisy returns Hokes care
• Companionship can make life worth living
• Race and gender barriers can be overcome

12
Counter meta-narrative

• Family care is a public good
• Ill and disabled persons are productive citizens
• Cultural assumptions as objects of inquiry
• Everyday experience as a focal point for research
  and service planning

13
What the study of caregiving needs now is a new
language, the analytic services of
interpretation, transformation, and
circumstantiality without them, intervention,
even though rationally planned and concisely
programmed, will service nothing but
accountability.
Gubrium J. Lynott, R., (1987), Measurement and
the interpretation of burden in the Alzheimers
Disease experience. Journal of Aging Studies.
1(3), p. 283