Abstract:
Anthropological research into individual and ,societal experiences of ageing has
developed along two broad lines. The first has been an effort to challenge the idea that
human beings age in biologically and socially similar ways regardless of cultural
context, while the second has been to explore the moral and political implications and
ambivalences of changing elder care arrangements, especially as they pertain to
relationships between the family, state, and market. This paper draws from
ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a charitable elders' home in Colombo, Sri Lanka,
to describe the effects of an ageing population on popular Buddhist giving practices,
and the effects of those practices on the ways in which the elderly population is being
imagined. The material shows how elders' homes, amidst some controversy, are
increasingly being seen as appropriate places for the gifting of matakaddna, leading to
the fusion of charitable and sacrificial traditions of ddna and innovations in ritual
practice. We argue that the relationship that exists between elders' homes and ddna is
illustrative of an emerging thanatopolitics attributable to the challenges presented by a
growing population of the dependent elderly.
