The Rise of Community in Asian Care Provision

Theories of civil society sometimes assume or praise a civil society as being independent from the state, in which citizens, by communicating their opinions freely, cultivate their power to claim oppositions and/or propose alternatives to government’s decision-making. However, in Asian countries, governments themselves have intervened in cultivating civil societies in the modernization processes. For example, in Japan, the Meiji, Taisho and Showa governments tried to bring up a civil society in order to catch up with western modern nation-states (Garon 1998). The neighborhood association, chônaikai, originates in such a government’s effort to organize a cooperative civil society.

Recently, even in many countries including advanced welfare states in the west, the governments have become more relied on the voluntary/community sector to deliver care to the elderly and/or children. Partly because of the financial constraints combined with changes of demographic structures, the role of volunteer/community sector has become more important to sustain lives of vulnerable people. The introduction of the social model of care (as opposed to the medical model) seems to have legitimized this trend.

This paper tries to grasp the weight of voluntary/community sector in care diamonds in Asian societies. It outlines common features as well as differences among Asian societies in the structures of community care provision, and it also investigates how governments promote community care through regulations and incentives. Through these inquiries, it tries to explore whether and to what extent the community sectors contribute to de-familiarization of care in Asian societies.