ANA ORTIZ, JANIE SIMMONS and W. LADSON HINTON LOCATIONS OF REMORSE AND HOMELANDS OF RESILIENCE: NOTES ON GRIEF AND SENSE OF LOSS OF PLACE OF LATINO AND IRISH-AMERICAN CAREGIVERS OF DEMENTED ELDERS ABSTRACT. In this essay, based on qualitative research with Latino and Irish-American caregivers of demented elders, we argue that spatially and culturally constituted definitions of personhood, the moral life, and justice shape perceptions of normative aging, the agency of the demented persons and their place in the community, the appropriate care of the aged and demented, as well as partially determine the concrete resources which will be available to elders and their families. We review how ties to homelands and neighborhood institu- tions act as mediators and shapers of anticipatory grief, caregiver burdens, and caregiver resources, serving as a buffer against exhaustion and despair for some families (primarily the Irish-American sample), and as an additional site of loss or stress for others (primarily the Latino sample). KEY WORDS: Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, ethnicity, social history, Latino, Irish- American INTRODUCTION Both the “universal” old person claimed by gerontology and the Western-derived agenda cited to solve her or his problem maintain a utopian stance, demanding state patronage incompatible with local economies and legitimating the state’s shrugging of its shoulders.... Alternative definitions of “the problem,” alternative distributions of limited resources, and alternative formulations of the relations between old people, families, and the state are not considered. (Cohen 1992: 156) In his biting challenge to the hegemonic and homogenizing construction of the aged in India as a “problem population” within international geron- tology and state programs of health sector development, Lawrence Cohen reminds us that biomedical discourse on aging is filtered through complex local histories and local moral economies as it courses towards engagement and response at the micro-level (Cohen 1992). By looking through the lens of place, by engaging in a rigorously specific, situated and historical analysis of the multiple actors and agendas shaping the discovery of needs and the creation of services for Indian elders, Cohen is able to identify rich undercurrents of meaning within these developments which are rooted in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 23: 477–500, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.