Ageing Against the Flood: Older Adults’ Affective Resilience, Care Work, and Disaster Response in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Mainstream Buddhist values and institutional mechanisms in Thailand tend to treat older adults as passive recipients of care. Younger generations accrue merit by taking care of their elders. In October 2024, a massive flood of Chiang Mai’s Ping River created tremendous need for disaster relief. Among the first responders were local older adults, particularly women, in their 70s and 80s. From ethnographic research and interviews among cohorts of older adults in Chiang Mai, including participants in the 2024 flood relief, this article demonstrates how older adults actively mobilise kinship ties, neighbourhood networks, and community institutions to cope with flooding and sustain everyday life. The article operationalises Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies to illustrate how these older adults use their neighbourly ties and mutual empathy to offer favours and receive merit as part of Buddhist understandings of kindness and reciprocity. Building on Felicity Aulino’s work on Thai Buddhist understandings of obligation and care for older adults, these findings note that those affective relations are mobilised in addition to, and alongside, those moral obligations. Finally, and in contrast to those moral ideals, the practices not only sustain elder care systems but also reshape local political dynamics by positioning care as a form of civic participation, which serves to extend local patronage networks for electoral systems.