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Frontmatter
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 29 November 2023
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- 19 June 2023, pp 1-4
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Preface
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 29 November 2023
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- 19 June 2023, pp 7-8
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Summary
Book production is always a collective effort; this book in particular. The process began in one of those busy cafes near the Yale University campus and is now drawing to a close with its three authors spread around the globe. What started as close interactive collaboration ends through internet contacts. How the work world has changed! Nonetheless, the underlying process reflects three researchers working with one accord to piece together the meaning and memory of a decades-long violent conflict from the divergent perspectives of its various protagonists. Adding to the timeliness—and poignancy—of a project focussed on the trauma of whole societies is the fact that it is being released in 2023, which marks the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of American combat forces in Vietnam. We look forward to the reception of these efforts.
A book like this is not only a collaborative endeavor among three authors. As we researched this project, we visited a multitude of museums, monuments, memorials, and galleries scattered across the United States and Vietnam, sites whose creation necessitated the collaboration of vast numbers of people and considerable resources. These sites range widely in terms of the way they tell the story of the American-Vietnamese War and the degree to which they continue to impact their visitors. But even more moving than our visits to these sites were the interviews and conversations we had with countless students, scholars, artists, journalists, veterans, and other community members who have been touched in some way by the American-Vietnamese War. Without the generous insights, reflections, and vulnerability of these individuals regarding what for many remains a deeply personal—and often painful—topic, this book would simply not have been possible. It is to you, with gratitude, that we dedicate this work.
As this project has taken shape, we have had the opportunity to present various portions of it at academic conferences across Europe, North America, and Asia, and we wish to express our thanks to the scholarly community that has offered us substantial feedback during these presentations. In particular, our thanks extends to the anonymous reviewers who offered their detailed and nuanced comments on our manuscript, and to the editorial staff at Amsterdam University Press, all of whom have helped improve the book.
1 - Introduction: Cultural Trauma and the American-Vietnamese War
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 29 November 2023
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- 19 June 2023, pp 9-40
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Summary
Abstract
There is continuing conflict over how the American-Vietnamese War ought to be understood, represented, memorialized, and learned from, and this struggle over its memory has been waged within the communities of all those who were touched by its hostilities. And precisely how the war is remembered is of ongoing concern, for when a collectivity understands itself to have been fractured by some calamity, then if it is to persist as a collectivity, it must reconstitute its identity. This process of collective identity reconstruction is indicative of cultural trauma, the traumatization of an entire society. The present chapter develops the conceptual tools necessary to trace this process within the societies of each of the war’s primary belligerents.
Keywords: Vietnam War, cultural trauma, collective memory, cultural sociology, Vietnamese American, narrative identity
One day, Vietnam may become a country; for now, it remains a war….
The Nation, 1990At the close of the twentieth century, Vietnamese-American novelist Monique T.D. Truong claimed that “For the majority of Americans, Vietnam as a self-defined country never existed,” that its existence in the U.S. national consciousness emerged only when it became “defined by military conflict”—as the site of American warfare (1997: 220). Through the opening decades of the twenty-first century, little has changed to challenge this assertion. Twenty years after Truong made this statement, another Vietnamese-American writer, Pulitzer-Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times where he asserted, “For most Americans and the world, ‘Vietnam’ means the ‘Vietnam War,’ and the Vietnam War means the American war” (NYT, 5/2/2017). This fact is also highlighted by the editors of a 2016 book on the war when they claim that “‘Vietnam’ is used as shorthand in the United States for the war, not the country” (Boyle and Lim, 2016: xv). And as if to illustrate this point, Karl Marlantes, the author of Matterhorn and a veteran of the American-Vietnamese War, titled an article in such a way as to make this equivalence of Vietnam-as-war explicit: “Vietnam: The War That Killed Trust” (NYT, 1/8/2017).
4 - Journey From the Fall
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 29 November 2023
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- 19 June 2023, pp 193-236
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Summary
Abstract
Unlike both the Vietnamese communists and the broader American society, the South Vietnamese experienced at the end of the American-Vietnamese War the annihilation of their governmental and political institutions, military forces, economic system, and mode of social organization: their state, the Republic of Vietnam, was simply snuffed out. What’s more—and also in contrast to the communists and the rest of the United States—the individuals who would become Vietnamese Americans were displaced from their homeland to a foreign country. The dissolution of the Republic of Vietnam and the dislocation of the Vietnamese to North America led this group to construct a new collective identity over the course of subsequent years, and the present chapter provides an overview of what the Vietnamese Americans consistently narrate as the key moments of their shared experience.
Keywords: Vietnam War, cultural trauma, collective memory, cultural sociology, Vietnamese American, narrative identity
How did we get to such a lonely place? … I keep looking toward the past…tracing our journey in reverse…over the ocean…through the war…seeking an origin story that will set everything right.
From the graphic novel The Best We Could DoIt should be clear by this point in the book that although the collective memories of the American-Vietnamese War share the same subject matter, the way those memories are narrated within each of our three main social groups differs substantially. In the case of the Vietnamese Americans, to whom we now turn our attention, the most radical differences in terms of content derive in part from two historical peculiarities. First, unlike both the Vietnamese communists and the broader American society, at the end of the war the South Vietnamese experienced the annihilation of their governmental and political institutions, military forces, economic system, and mode of social organization: their state—the Republic of Vietnam—was simply snuffed out. Second, also in contrast to the communists and the rest of the United States, the individuals who would become Vietnamese Americans were displaced from their homeland to a foreign country. As we pointed out in the book’s introduction, when a collectivity understands itself to have suffered a significant calamity, one that fractures its collective identity, then if it is to persist as a collectivity, it must reconstitute its identity.
Index
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 29 November 2023
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- 19 June 2023, pp 357-360
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3 - The Trauma of Vietnam: The American Perspective
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 29 November 2023
- Print publication:
- 19 June 2023, pp 103-192
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Summary
Abstract
The chapter traces the “meaning struggle” as carried out in the various arenas of memory in the United States. Central concepts and themes in the official narration of the war are identified and discussed, such as the “Vietnam Syndrome” and the “lessons” drawn from the lost war. Could the war have been won, was it a “failure” from the beginning and thus a “tragic mistake”? The counter-narratives developed in the powerful antiwar movement are also given a central place in the chapter. Mass media and popular culture representations of the war are discussed in detail. Artworks, novels, and other forms of aesthetic representations are included, most especially those produced by veterans. The chapter concludes by arguing that the American war was the cause of cultural trauma in the United States.
Keywords: imagined community, American exceptionalism, Vietnam generation, Cold War
We know that for years now, there has been no country here but the war.
Michael Herr, 1968A just memory…recall(s) the weak, the subjugated, the different, the enemy, and the forgotten. Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2016: 17
For too long, we have lived with the “Vietnam Syndrome”.… It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause. A small country newly free from colonial rule sought our help in establishing self-rule and the means of self-defense against a totalitarian neighbor bent on conquest. We dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt as if we were doing something shameful, and we have been shabby in our treatment of those who returned. They fought as well and as bravely as any Americans have ever fought in any war. They deserve our gratitude, our respect, and our continuing concern. Ronald Reagan, 1980 speech before the VFW national convention, while campaigning for the American presidency
As the North Vietnamese forces approached the outskirts of Saigon on April 29, 1975, approximately 1,000 Americans remained in the city. They were mostly support personnel, both military and civilian, left to administer American interests. Among them was a contingent of U.S. Marines hastily sent in to protect the American embassy and its staff.
2 - Cultural Trauma and Vietnamese Arenas of Memory
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 29 November 2023
- Print publication:
- 19 June 2023, pp 41-102
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Summary
Abstract
After a brief historical background, this chapter explores the meaning and collective memory of the American-Vietnamese War as it is represented and displayed in Vietnamese war museums. The official narrative of these museums is the focal point of the analysis. The founding narrative celebrates the collective struggle against colonial domination, one that includes the war against the Americans. We discuss how the Vietnamese of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam have created memorial sites and ceremonies to represent this narrative of national liberation through violent struggle against more powerful enemies. Their narrative focuses on the forcefulness of long-term resilience and collective will. As other narratives exist, the dominant heroic narrative expressed in official museums and memorials is contrasted by examples from the arena of the arts and ancestor worshiping.
Keywords: Collective memory, Vietnamese history, war museums, commemoration, the American-Vietnamese War
April 30, 1975: The Moment of Triumph
On April 29, 1975, the North Vietnamese army initiated a heavy artillery bombardment in order to prepare its final attack on Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh). By April 30, the last line of defense northeast of Saigon broke down and the North Vietnamese army advanced. In a matter of hours, they took control over most of the strategic places in Saigon, including the presidential palace. A North Vietnamese T-54B tank, which later became iconic, broke the gates of the palace—a symbolic instance famously depicted by the war photographer Francoise Demulder. Saigon had fallen, and the war was over. Earlier that month, on April 21, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam had resigned and was eventually replaced by General Minh, who on this day was serving his third and what would be his last day in office. Somewhat remarkably, there were no massacres and no ad hoc actions of revenge that day, and the takeover is generally described as being made in good order. This can partly be explained by the discipline that now marked the North Vietnamese Army (Hägerdal, 2005) but surely also by the fact that there was no longer any major resistance and that as many as 7,800 Americans and South Vietnamese had already been evacuated in the previous days.
5 - Cultural Trauma and Vietnamese-American Arenas of Memory
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 29 November 2023
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- 19 June 2023, pp 237-326
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Abstract
This chapter provides a fine-grained analysis of the competing narratives of the American-Vietnamese War that have circulated within the Vietnamese-American community. The three major arenas of collective memory where these narrative contests occur are delineated (i.e., the community, the academic, and the artistic), then the specific narratives within each of those arenas are identified. Based on the ongoing narrative struggle over the nature of the war and the Vietnamese-American collective identity, the claim is made that the Vietnamese-American collectivity has suffered a cultural trauma.
Keywords: Vietnam War, cultural trauma, collective memory, cultural sociology, Vietnamese American, narrative identity
Continuing with the organizational plan of this book, we will now proceed to examine the different arenas of memory that the Vietnamese-American community comprises and explore the ways in which the war-related narratives are handled in each of them. One of the unique characteristics of the Vietnamese-American collectively is its hybrid nature—situated as it is within and between two cultures. Pulitzer-Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen describes how the Vietnamese-American community “is the third force between the binary poles of Vietnam and the United States,” how it “simultaneously belongs to or in both countries” (2017: 566). We pointed in the previous chapter to the challenges many Vietnamese refugees faced upon their arrival in the U.S.; to that list, we now add the challenge of how to make sense of the American-Vietnamese War and how to understand one’s identity in relation to it. Thanh Tan, host of the Seattle-based Second Wave, a podcast exploring the Vietnamese-American experience, speaks for many second-generation Vietnamese Americans when she says the war “is the backbone of my identity. It doesn’t matter that I was born after the fighting ended. Whether I like it or not, the Vietnam War is my war, too” (NYT, 10/3/2017). And indeed, she has often not liked it. In the following, Tan explains how this struggle affected her in her formative years:
I would see things related to the war—like my mother shedding tears while listening to an old pre-1975 Vietnamese song or my dad organizing a “Black April” memorial event commemorating the loss of South Vietnam—but I didn’t know how to process any of it.
Table of Contents
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 29 November 2023
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- 19 June 2023, pp 5-6
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6 - Conclusion: War, Trauma, and Beyond
- Ron Eyerman, Yale University, Connecticut and Lunds Universitet, Sweden, Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Magnus Ring, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 29 November 2023
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- 19 June 2023, pp 327-356
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Summary
Abstract
The chapter summarizes the book’s central arguments, particularly the American-Vietnamese War as cultural trauma. Identifying and clarifying the arenas in which collective memory is constructed and thus the development of cultural trauma, we reiterate the claim that the war was cause for cultural trauma in the United States. As the fracturing of collective identity central to cultural trauma was not present in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, we argue that cultural trauma did not occur there. What is known as the American War was understood by a large portion of the population as a war of national liberation and a continuation of a longer struggle against foreign domination. The chapter ends with a discussion of the costs of the war and the possibility of reconciliation between the participants.
Keywords: Cultural trauma, forgiveness, reconciliation
In an age when human sensibility is finely tuned to all the nuances of despair, it still seems important to say of those who die in war that they did not die in vain. And when we can’t say that, or think we can’t, we mix our mourning with anger. We search for guilty men.
Michael Walzer, emphasis in the originalAs discussed in the Introduction, cultural trauma occurs when the taken-for-granted foundations of a collective identity are fractured and are made the object of critical debate. Most commonly, there is some precipitating occurrence of great social and political disruption—a war or natural catastrophe—that acts as catalyst. This sets in motion a trauma drama, with collective efforts to locate the causes, to name those responsible, and to identify the necessary steps towards recovery and repair. The re-narration of collective identity is central to this process. The discourse around collective identity is intimately intertwined with collective memory. Such identity, or identification—be it with family, an institution or profession, ethnic group, or nation—is rooted in a reconstructed past as well as present and is as concerned with the future as the past. This selected and filtered past, lying somewhere between myth and history, takes form in a narrative, a shared story of who ‘we’ are and came to be, as well as being embodied in material objects such as memorials and museums and embedded in ritual practices like holiday celebrations and commemorations.
Vietnam, A War, Not a Country
- Ron Eyerman, Todd Madigan, Magnus Ring
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- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 29 November 2023
- Print publication:
- 19 June 2023
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Vietnam, A War, Not a Country explores the conflicting ways in which the American-Vietnamese War has been collectively remembered and represented from the perspective of the war's three primary belligerents: the Vietnamese communists, the South Vietnamese, and the Americans. The book examines how the three different collectives memorialize this traumatizing historical event. Within each of these three groups there exists a number of competing narratives, generating not only a sense of shared meaning and community, but also impassioned social conflict. In order to trace these narratives within each collectivity, the authors develop the concept of arenas of memory, distinct discourses that are tied to specific individuals, organizations, and institutions that advocate specific narratives through specific forms of media. Their analysis leads them to make the case as to whether each of these societies experienced a cultural trauma as a result of the way in which the war is remembered.
Four - How different countries allocate long-term care resources to older users: a comparative snapshot
- Edited by Cristiano Gori, London School of Economics and Political Science, Jose-Luis Fernandez, London School of Economics and Political Science, Raphael Wittenberg
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- Book:
- Long-Term Care Reforms in OECD Countries
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- Bristol University Press
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- 19 August 2022
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- 18 December 2015, pp 47-76
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Summary
Introduction
Public responsibility for long-term care (LTC) – in particular, care for frail older people – has expanded rapidly in most advanced nations in the past two or three decades. A key issue is resource allocation: how much money to spend and on what. But although the LTC field has drawn more and more attention from researchers – we know far more about how various approaches work than ever before – patterns of resource allocation have not been adequately studied. As a recent report indicates, ‘the current available statistics about public LTC programs are somewhat patchy’ (Carrera et al, 2013, p 31). Actually, information is available about LTC expenditure in most individual countries, and recently several admirable surveys of LTC policy across several countries have appeared (see, for example, Colombo et al, 2011; Riedel and Kraus, 2011; Mot et al, 2012; Rodrigues et al, 2012; Genet et al, 2013; OECD, 2013; Ranci and Pavaloni, 2013; Mor et al, 2014). However, systematic comparative analysis of expenditure and coverage of national LTC systems has been lacking.
The objective is simple; the task is quite difficult. Two of us discovered this in trying to compare expenditures in just three countries, Germany, Japan and the US (Campbell et al, 2010). It took far longer than we expected and required many delicate decisions to match up the categories. The present study takes on seven countries, a number small enough to manage the necessary mutual adjusting with our limited time and resources, but large enough to represent significant models of LTC policy.
To draw on quite conventional images in the welfare state literature, we have Sweden in social-democratic Northern Europe, Italy in familial Southern Europe, Germany in corporatist mid-continent, Australia, the US and England as quite different versions of the Anglo-Saxon ‘residual’ model, and Japan as the relatively new entry that shares aspects of all the other models. This chapter presents details of each country's approach to LTC and how their policies have changed over time. This chapter is essentially a ‘snapshot’ cross-sectional analysis of spending and coverage data.
Since our contribution is largely methodological, we begin by explaining how we have tried to deal with the inherent problems of comparing LTC policy. There are four key approaches.
The implementation of elder-care in France and Sweden: a macro and micro perspective
- INGRID JÖNSSON, ANNE-MARIE DAUNE-RICHARD, SOPHIE ODENA, MAGNUS RING
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- Journal:
- Ageing & Society / Volume 31 / Issue 4 / May 2011
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 18 January 2011, pp. 625-644
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- May 2011
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This paper presents results from a comparative project on the implementation of elder-care in France and Sweden. The transition to requiring care is understood as a process, and elder-care is seen as a part of a more general organisation of social care that reflects different welfare traditions. An overview of elder-care on the institutional level in the two countries is supplemented by case studies from the perspective of older people which identify ways of co-operation between actors, such as public eldercare providers, family members and help provided by profit and non-profit organisations. The interviews include approximately 20 older persons in each country as well as a small number of administrators and adult children. The study sheds light on how policies are implemented on the local level and puts the focus on who actually does what and when for older persons with care needs. The different roles played by the state, the family, the market and civil society are examined. Family members in France take on a more active role both as co-ordinators of care and as actual caregivers. The study shows that gender and social class remain associated with caring but that such differences are much larger in France than in Sweden.