“Here, everybody looks after everybody else”: Older people and a ‘rural ethic of care’

Despite the emergence of a flourishing body of work on care within geography in recent decades, research into rural informal care specifically remains relatively sparse. Addressing such a gap, this paper draws on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with 36 participants to examine the moral expectations, practices, and limits of care among people aged 65 and over living in rural and remote locations in Scotland and England. Building on a feminist ethics of care, I develop the notion of a ‘rural ethic of care’, pointing to rural social intimacy, generalised reciprocity, and moral obligation as its perceived defining attributes. I also explore a series of escalating critiques put forward by participants of this ethic, including the distinct role neighbours, friends, and acquaintances played in the provision of care and lack of physically intimate care among these relations; struggles around asking for and offering care ethically as a result of ideals of independence; and the idea that social intimacy could itself impede practices of care. Two major sets of conclusions are drawn. First, I argue that rurality can both facilitate and detract from care, simultaneously supporting and challenging broader notions of rural spaces as ‘idyllic’. Second, I reflect on the implications of the findings for those ageing in rural places. While many older adults are providers of informal care to others in their community, the challenges to care posed by the rural setting are magnified amongst those ageing in a more vulnerable fashion.