Download or read book Aged by Culture written by Margaret Morganroth Gullette and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans enjoy longer lives and better health, yet we are becoming increasingly obsessed with trying to stay young. What drives the fear of turning 30, the boom in anti-aging products, the wars between generations? What men and women of all ages have in common is that we are being insidiously aged by the culture in which we live. In this illuminating book, Margaret Morganroth Gullette reveals that aging doesn't start in our chromosomes, but in midlife downsizing, the erosion of workplace seniority, threats to Social Security, or media portrayals of "aging Xers" and "greedy" Baby Boomers. To combat the forces aging us prematurely, Gullette invites us to change our attitudes, our life storytelling, and our society. Part intimate autobiography, part startling cultural expose, this book does for age what gender and race studies have done for their categories. Aged by Culture is an impassioned manifesto against the pernicious ideologies that steal hope from every stage of our lives.

Download or read book Agewise written by Margaret Morganroth Gullette and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-10-21 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Let’s face it: almost everyone fears growing older. We worry about losing our looks, our health, our jobs, our self-esteem—and being supplanted in work and love by younger people. It feels like the natural, inevitable consequence of the passing years, But what if it’s not? What if nearly everything that we think of as the “natural” process of aging is anything but? In Agewise, renowned cultural critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette reveals that much of what we dread about aging is actually the result of ageism—which we can, and should, battle as strongly as we do racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry. Drawing on provocative and under-reported evidence from biomedicine, literature, economics, and personal stories, Gullette probes the ageism thatdrives discontent with our bodies, our selves, and our accomplishments—and makes us easy prey for marketers who want to sell us an illusory vision of youthful perfection. Even worse, rampant ageism causes society to discount, and at times completely discard, the wisdom and experience acquired by people over the course of adulthood. The costs—both collective and personal—of this culture of decline are almost incalculable, diminishing our workforce, robbing younger people of hope for a decent later life, and eroding the satisfactions and sense of productivity that should animate our later years. Once we open our eyes to the pervasiveness of ageism, however, we can begin to fight it—and Gullette lays out ambitious plans for the whole life course, from teaching children anti-ageism to fortifying the social safety nets, and thus finally making possible the real pleasures and opportunities promised by the new longevity. A bracing, controversial call to arms, Agewise will surprise, enlighten, and, perhaps most important, bring hope to readers of all ages.

Download or read book Culture in the Age of Three Worlds written by Michael Denning and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last half of the twentieth century, culture moved to the foreground of political and intellectual life. Suddenly everyone discovered that culture had been mass produced like Ford's cars; the masses had culture and culture had a mass. Culture was everywhere, no longer the property of the cultured or the cultivated. Radical social movements around the globe invented a politics of culture. Culture In the Age of Three Worlds is a reflection on this cultural turn which was a fundamental aspect of the age of three worlds, that short half century between 1945 and 1989 when it was imagined that the world was divided into three-the capitalist first world, the communist second world, and the decolonizing third world. Recasting the legacies of British cultural studies and the radical traditions of the American studies movement in a global context, Michael Denning explores the political and intellectual battles over the meanings of culture, addresses the rise of a distinctive 'American ideology,' and charts the lineaments of the global cultures that emerged as three worlds gave way to one.

Download or read book This Chair Rocks written by Ashton Applewhite and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wow. This book totally rocks. It arrived on a day when I was in deep confusion and sadness about my age. Everything about it, from my invisibility to my neck. Within four or five wise, passionate pages, I had found insight, illumination, and inspiration. I never use the word empower, but this book has empowered me.” —Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author Author, activist, and TED speaker Ashton Applewhite has written a rousing manifesto calling for an end to discrimination and prejudice on the basis of age. In our youth obsessed culture, we’re bombarded by media images and messages about the despairs and declines of our later years. Beauty and pharmaceutical companies work overtime to convince people to purchase products that will retain their youthful appearance and vitality. Wrinkles are embarrassing. Gray hair should be colored and bald heads covered with implants. Older minds and bodies are too frail to keep up with the pace of the modern working world and olders should just step aside for the new generation. Ashton Applewhite once held these beliefs too until she realized where this prejudice comes from and the damage it does. Lively, funny, and deeply researched, This Chair Rocks traces her journey from apprehensive boomer to pro-aging radical, and in the process debunks myth after myth about late life. Explaining the roots of ageism in history and how it divides and debases, Applewhite examines how ageist stereotypes cripple the way our brains and bodies function, looks at ageism in the workplace and the bedroom, exposes the cost of the all-American myth of independence, critiques the portrayal of elders as burdens to society, describes what an all-age-friendly world would look like, and offers a rousing call to action. It’s time to create a world of age equality by making discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind of bias. Whether you’re older or hoping to get there, this book will shake you by the shoulders, cheer you up, make you mad, and change the way you see the rest of your life. Age pride!

Download or read book Juvenescence written by Robert Pogue Harrison and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How old are we, those of us who belong to the postwar era? By many measures, both evolutionary and cultural, we are older than ever. But we are also getting startlingly youngeryounger in looks, attire, behavior, mentality, desires. We belong, Robert Harrison says, to an age of juvenescence. "Juvenescence "is about the ways in which the spirits of youth and age have coexisted and shaped each other, both in individuals and culture, from the time of antiquity to the present. It is also a book that asks what it means for the future when youth gains the upper hand to the unprecedented degree it has today. Our way of aging, Harrison argues, resembles thethe scientific concept of "neoteny"the retention of immature characteristics into adulthood. We mature, but with a still tenacious youthfulness, driving drives toward innovation rather than reflection, genius rather than wisdom. At its best, human maturity has its source in the youth it brings to fruition. And yet our protracted youth, Harrison suggests, is a luxury that can be supported only by our elders and the institutions they build. Although Harrison believes, echoing Stephen Jay Gould, that our genius as a species lies in our collective reluctance to grow up, he argues that we are today in a phase of radical juvenalization that allows no space for the kind of wisdom that builds upon the past."

Download or read book Facing Age written by Laura Hurd Clarke and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in the new series Diversity and Aging, Laura Hurd Clarke's Facing Age examines the relationship between aging and women in a culture obsessed with youthfulness. From weight gain, to wrinkles, to sagging skin, to gray hair, the book explores older women's complex and often contradictory feelings about their bodies and the physical realities of growing older. Although the women in the book express discontent about their aging visage, they also emphasize the importance of functional abilities and suggest that appearance becomes less central in later life. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted over a ten year period, Hurd Clarke brings alive feminist theories about aging, beauty work, femininity, and the body. The book also discusses medicine and the aging appearance, with interviews from medical providers and women about treatments such as Botox injections and injectable fillers. This book makes an important and timely contribution to the discussion of gendered ageism and older women's experiences of growing older in a youth-obsessed culture.

Download or read book The Stages of Age written by Anne Davis Basting and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A first-of-its-kind study that explores the intersections of performance and aging. Playwright and scholar Anne Davis Basting explores both aging actors and aging AS acting in a cross-section of American theatrical representations that hope to catalyze shifts in our understanding of age. Illustrations.

Download or read book Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution written by Michal Jan Rozbicki and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his new book, Michal Jan Rozbicki undertakes to bridge the gap between the political and the cultural histories of the American Revolution. Through a careful examination of liberty as both the ideological axis and the central metaphor of the age, he is able to offer a fresh model for interpreting the Revolution. By establishing systemic linkages between the histories of the free and the unfree, and between the factual and the symbolic, this framework points to a fundamental reassessment of the ways we think about the American Founding. Rozbicki moves beyond the two dominant interpretations of Revolutionary liberty—one assuming the Founders invested it with a modern meaning that has in essence continued to the present day, the other highlighting its apparent betrayal by their commitment to inequality. Through a consistent focus on the interplay between culture and power, Rozbicki demonstrates that liberty existed as an intricate fusion of political practices and symbolic forms. His deeply historicized reconstruction of its contemporary meanings makes it clear that liberty was still understood as a set of privileges distributed according to social rank rather than a universal right. In fact, it was because the Founders considered this assumption self-evident that they felt confident in publicizing a highly liberal, symbolic narrative of equal liberty to represent the Revolutionary endeavor. The uncontainable success of this narrative went far beyond the circumstances that gave birth to it because it put new cultural capital—a conceptual arsenal of rights and freedoms—at the disposal of ordinary people as well as political factions competing for their support, providing priceless legitimacy to all those who would insist that its nominal inclusiveness include them in fact.

Download or read book The Late Age of Print written by Ted Striphas and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, the author assesses our modern book culture by focusing on five key elements including the explosion of retail bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, and the formation of the Oprah Book Club.

Download or read book The Circus Age written by Janet M. Davis and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-10-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century ago, daily life ground to a halt when the circus rolled into town. Across America, banks closed, schools canceled classes, farmers left their fields, and factories shut down so that everyone could go to the show. In this entertaining and provocative book, Janet Davis links the flowering of the early-twentieth-century American railroad circus to such broader historical developments as the rise of big business, the breakdown of separate spheres for men and women, and the genesis of the United States' overseas empire. In the process, she casts the circus as a powerful force in consolidating the nation's identity as a modern industrial society and world power. Davis explores the multiple "shows" that took place under the big top, from scripted performances to exhibitions of laborers assembling and tearing down tents to impromptu spectacles of audiences brawling, acrobats falling, and animals rampaging. Turning Victorian notions of gender, race, and nationhood topsy-turvy, the circus brought its vision of a rapidly changing world to spectators--rural as well as urban--across the nation. Even today, Davis contends, the influence of the circus continues to resonate in popular representations of gender, race, and the wider world.

Download or read book Ending Ageism or How Not to Shoot Old People written by Margaret Morganroth Gullette and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-23 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars and the APA's Florence L. Denmark Award for Contributions to Women and Aging When the term “ageism” was coined in 1969, many problems of exclusion seemed resolved by government programs like Social Security and Medicare. As people live longer lives, today’s great demotions of older people cut deeper into their self-worth and human relations, beyond the reach of law or public policy. In Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People, award-winning writer and cultural critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette confronts the offenders: the ways people aging past midlife are portrayed in the media, by adult offspring; the esthetics and politics of representation in photography, film, and theater; and the incitement to commit suicide for those with early signs of “dementia.” In this original and important book, Gullette presents evidence of pervasive age-related assaults in contemporary societies and their chronic affects. The sudden onset of age-related shaming can occur anywhere—the shove in the street, the cold shoulder at the party, the deaf ear at the meeting, the shut-out by the personnel office or the obtuseness of a government. Turning intimate suffering into public grievances, Ending Ageism, Or How Not to Shoot Old People effectively and beautifully argues that overcoming ageism is the next imperative social movement of our time. About the cover image: This elegant, dignified figure--Leda Machado, a Cuban old enough to have seen the Revolution--once the center of a vast photo mural, is now a fragment on a ruined wall. Ageism tears down the structures that all humans need to age well; to end it, a symbol of resilience offers us all brisk blue-sky energy. “Leda Antonia Machado” from “Wrinkles of the City, 2012.” Piotr Trybalski / Trybalski.com. Courtesy of the artist. A Declaration of Grievances "A Declaration of Grievances" was written by Margaret Morganroth Gullette and is excerpted from her book Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People (2017, Rutgers University Press). The poster was designed by Carolyn Kerchof.​ A Declaration of Grievances (in English): https://d3tto5i5w9ogdd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/15175130/A-Declaration-of-Grievances_Eng.pdf​ A Declaration of Grievances (in Spanish): https://d3tto5i5w9ogdd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/15175131/A-Declaration-of-Grievances_Spanish.pdf ​A Declaration of Grievances (in French): https://d3tto5i5w9ogdd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/15175130/A-Declaration-of-Grievances_French.pdf ​A Declaration of Grievances (in German): https://d3tto5i5w9ogdd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/15175131/A-Declaration-of-Grievances_German.pdf Print the PDF (make sure to click "fit to page") and hang the Declaration up in your home or place of work. Please share this link with other people you know who care about the rights of older persons. Share on social media with the hashtags #ADeclarationOfGrievances and #EndingAgeismGullette. For more information, an excerpt, links to reviews, and special offers on this book, go to: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/ending-ageism Related website: (https://www.brandeis.edu/wsrc/scholars/profiles/gullette.html)

Download or read book The Seventies written by Shelton Waldrep and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Seventies is must reading for anyone who wants to revisit that glam decade and the contributions it made to our culture. The contributors take you on a fascinating journey that looks at the Black Panthers, Jonestown, glam rock, black action films and gay male subcultures as well as including queer rereadings of cultural phenomena, examinations of clothing and seventies bodies, and an essay on the meaning of sound in the seventies.

Download or read book The Age of Youth in Argentina written by Valeria Manzano and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This social and cultural history of Argentina's "long sixties" argues that the nation's younger generation was at the epicenter of a public struggle over democracy, authoritarianism, and revolution from the mid-twentieth century through the ruthless military dictatorship that seized power in 1976. Valeria Manzano demonstrates how, during this period, large numbers of youths built on their history of earlier activism and pushed forward closely linked agendas of sociocultural modernization and political radicalization. Focusing also on the views of adults who assessed, and sometimes profited from, youth culture, Manzano analyzes countercultural formations--including rock music, sexuality, student life, and communal living experiences--and situates them in an international context. She details how, while Argentines of all ages yearned for newness and change, it was young people who championed the transformation of deep-seated traditions of social, cultural, and political life. The significance of youth was not lost on the leaders of the rising junta: people aged sixteen to thirty accounted for 70 percent of the estimated 20,000 Argentines who were "disappeared" during the regime.

Download or read book Aging in Culture and Society written by Christine L. Fry and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1980 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the life and accomplishments of the former slave who became a scientist and devoted his career to helping the South improve its agriculture.

Download or read book Aging in America written by Lawrence R. Samuel and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-03 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aging in America traces the story of aging over the course of the last half century, demonstrating our culture's negative attitudes toward a natural and inevitable human process and offering a deep understanding of the subject's past in order to help anticipate its future.

Download or read book Learning to Be Old written by Margaret Cruikshank and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Cruikshank’s Learning to Be Old examines what it means to grow old in America today. The book questions social myths and fears about aging, sickness, and the other social roles of the elderly, the over-medicalization of many older people, and ageism. In this book, Cruikshank proposes alternatives to the ways aging is usually understood in both popular culture and mainstream gerontology. Learning to Be Old does not propose the ideas of “successful aging” or “productive aging,” but more the idea of “learning” how to age. Featuring new research and analysis, the third edition of Learning to be Old demonstrates, more thoroughly than the previous editions, that aging is socially constructed. Among texts on aging the book is unique in its clear focus on the differences in aging for women and men, as well as for people in different socioeconomic groups. Cruikshank is able to put aging in a broad context that not only focuses on how aging affects women but men, as well. Key updates in the third edition include changes in the health care system, changes in how long older Americans are working especially given the impact of the recession, and new material on the brain and mind-body interconnections. Cruikshank impressively challenges conventional ideas about aging in this third edition of Learning to be Old. This will be a must-read for everyone interested in new ideas surrounding aging in America today.

Download or read book The Cultural Context of Aging written by Jay Sokolovsky and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1997 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume uses the concept of culture to explore the parameters of aging and being old in a worldwide context, thus providing a true cross-cultural and qualitative approach to social gerontology. Containing both specific case studies and broader analytical articles, this revised and expanded second edition focuses on the multitude of cultural solutions societies have available for dealing with the challenges, problems, and opportunities of growing old. Composed almost exclusively of specially commissioned articles, the text is organized around six topical areas which cover the major concerns of cross-cultural social gerontology. Each section is preceded by an introduction providing a framework for the chapters and highlighting key related issues. Also included are state-of-the-art resource guides including Internet sites, special student resources, data sets, and annotated bibliographies of related readings. The authors come from the fields of anthropology, sociology, gerontology, social work, psychology, psychiatry, and nursing. Through explorations of the experiences of real people, the contributors illuminate how elders actually live in such places as U.S. urban ethnic enclaves, rural Kenya, a South Seas island, urban China, or a New York City women's shelter. Dealing directly with key practical issues relevant to those seeking to pursue a career in the aging field, this volume covers: policy implications of demographic aging; culture and successful aging; culture and caregiving; gender and aging; grandparenthood and the crisis in urban families; informal social support; homelessness and aging; nursing homes and pet therapy; assisted suicide and death hastening behavior; the aging woman and widowhood; rural aging; self-help groups; and the cultural response to Alzheimer's disease. This essential text allows students to understand fully how culture can dictate what may appear to be natural responses to elders and aging.