Download or read book Through Japanese Eyes written by Yohko Tsuji and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-13 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Through Japanese Eyes, based on her thirty-year research at a senior center in upstate New York, anthropologist Yohko Tsuji describes old age in America from a cross-cultural perspective. Comparing aging in America and in her native Japan, she discovers that notable differences in the panhuman experience of aging are rooted in cultural differences between these two countries, and that Americans have strongly negative attitudes toward aging because it represents the antithesis of cherished American values, especially independence. Tsuji reveals that American culture, despite its seeming lack of guidance for those aging, plays a pivotal role in elders’ lives, simultaneously assisting and constraining them. Furthermore, the author’s lengthy period of research illustrates major changes in her interlocutors’ lives, incorporating their declines and death, and significant shifts in the culture of aging in American society as Tsuji herself gets to know American culture and grows into senescence herself. Through Japanese Eyes offers an ethnography of aging in America from a cross-cultural perspective based on a lengthy period of research. It illustrates how older Americans cope with the gap between the ideal (e.g., independence) and the real (e.g., needing assistance) of growing older, and the changes the author observed over thirty years of research.
Download or read book Towards a Medical Anthropology of Ageing written by Miguel Kottow and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-19 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proportion of people over 65 is substantially increasing and will continue to do so in the coming decades. Societies are concerned about the depletion of pension funds and austere fiscal plans that are unable to subsidize the basic care, protection and needs of their growing elderly populations. Gerontology is rapidly becoming a burgeoning research discipline that studies multiple aspects of human ageing, leading to top-down social policies that ineffectually address the significant needs of aged persons. Geriatric medicine has also expanded, attempting to medicalize the ageing process into a disease-free stage of “healthy ageing.” Ageing itself, this book argues, however, is not a disease per se, and should not be medicalized. In an era of uncertain medical expectations and unfulfilled social care of the ageing, this book presents an anthropological view, that focuses on three essential and transcendental conditions of human life that become vulnerable with advancing age: namely, relating to others, being in the world, and leaving a mark or legacy in the world.
Download or read book No Aging in India written by Lawrence Cohen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-07-30 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the opening sequence, in which mid-nineteenth-century Indian fishermen hear the possibility of redemption in an old woman's madness, No Aging in India captures the reader with its interplay of story and analysis. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic work, Lawrence Cohen links a detailed investigation of mind and body in old age in four neighborhoods of the Indian city of Varanasi (Banaras) with events and processes around India and around the world. This compelling exploration of senility—encompassing not only the aging body but also larger cultural anxieties—combines insights from medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies. Bridging literary genres as well as geographic spaces, Cohen responds to what he sees as the impoverishment of both North American and Indian gerontologies—the one mired in ambivalence toward demented old bodies, the other insistent on a dubious morality tale of modern families breaking up and abandoning their elderly. He shifts our attention irresistibly toward how old age comes to matter in the constitution of societies and their narratives of identity and history.
Download or read book Inequalities of Aging written by Elana D. Buch and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-08-28 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Elana D. Buch's "Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care" focuses on the topic of American home care and explores various contradictions and points of tension within the industry. It also raises awareness of the problematic inequality that exists in the American home care industry and argues for the creation of a more sustainable system."--
Download or read book Transitions and Transformations written by Caitrin Lynch and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rapid population aging, once associated with only a select group of modern industrialized nations, has now become a topic of increasing global concern. This volume reframes aging on a global scale by illustrating the multiple ways it is embedded within individual, social, and cultural life courses. It presents a broad range of ethnographic work, introducing a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to studying life-course transitions in conjunction with broader sociocultural transformations. Through detailed accounts, in such diverse settings as nursing homes in Sri Lanka, a factory in Massachusetts, cemeteries in Japan and clinics in Mexico, the authors explore not simply our understandings of growing older, but the interweaving of individual maturity and intergenerational relationships, social and economic institutions, and intimate experiences of gender, identity, and the body.
Download or read book Culture and Aging written by Margaret Clark and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Elderhood written by Louise Aronson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction A New York Times Bestseller Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner of the WSU AOS Bonner Book Award Winner of the 2022 At Home With Growing Older Impact Award As revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we've made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that's neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy--a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself. Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author's own words, "an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being."
Download or read book Anthropological Perspectives on Aging written by Britteny M. Howell and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-02-21 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth and wide-ranging approach to the study of older adults in society Taking a holistic approach to the study of aging, this volume uses biological, archaeological, medical, and cultural perspectives to explore how older adults have functioned in societies around the globe and throughout human history. As the world’s population over 65 years of age continues to increase, this wide-ranging approach fills a growing need for both academics and service professionals in gerontology, geriatrics, and related fields. Case studies from the United States, Tibet, Turkey, China, Nigeria, and Mexico provide examples of the ways age-related changes are influenced by environmental, genetic, sociocultural, and political-economic variables. Taken together, they help explain how the experience of aging varies across time and space. These contributions from noted anthropological scholars examine evolutionary and biological understandings of human aging, the roles of elders in various societies, issues of gender and ageism, and the role of chronic illness and “successful aging” among older adults. This volume highlights how an anthropology of aging can illustrate how older adults adapt to shifting life circumstances and environments, including changes to the ways in which individuals and families care for them. The research in Anthropological Perspectives on Aging can also help researchers, students, and practitioners reach across disciplines to address age discrimination and help improve health outcomes throughout the life course.
Download or read book Aging and Human Nature written by Mark Schweda and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on ageing as a topic of philosophical, theological, and historical anthropology. It provides a systematic inventory of fundamental theoretical questions and assumptions involved in the discussion of ageing and old age. What does it mean for human beings to grow old and become more vulnerable and dependent? How can we understand the manifestations of ageing and old age in the human body? How should we interpret the processes of change in the temporal course of a human life? What impact does old age have on the social dimensions of human existence? In order to tackle these questions, the volume brings together internationally distinguished scholars from the fields of philosophy, theology, cultural studies, social gerontology, and ageing studies. The collection of their original articles makes a twofold contribution to contemporary academic discourse. On one hand, it helps to clarify and deepen our understanding of ageing and old age by examining it from the fundamental point of view of philosophical, theological, and historical anthropology. At the same time, it also enhances and expands the discourses of philosophical, theological, and historical anthropology by systematically taking into account that human beings are essentially ageing creatures.
Download or read book Encounters with Aging written by Margaret M. Lock and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1994-01-20 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Lock explicitly compares Japanese and North American medical and political accounts of female middle age to challenge Western assumptions about menopause. She uses ethnography, interviews, statistics, historical and popular culture materials, and medical publications to produce a richly detailed account of Japanese women's lives. The result offers irrefutable evidence that the experience and meanings—even the endocrinological changes—associated with female midlife are far from universal. Rather, Lock argues, they are the product of an ongoing dialectic between culture and local biologies. Japanese focus on middle-aged women as family members, and particularly as caretakers of elderly relatives. They attach relatively little importance to the end of menstruation, seeing it as a natural part of the aging process and not a diseaselike state heralding physical decline and emotional instability. Even the symptoms of midlife are different: Japanese women report few hot flashes, for example, but complain frequently of stiff shoulders. Articulate, passionate, and carefully documented, Lock's study systematically undoes the many preconceptions about aging women in two distinct cultural settings. Because it is rooted in the everyday lives of Japanese women, it also provides an excellent entree to Japanese society as a whole. Aging and menopause are subjects that have been closeted behind our myths, fears, and misconceptions. Margaret Lock's cross-cultural perspective gives us a critical new lens through which to examine our assumptions.
Download or read book Other Ways of Growing Old written by Pamela T. Amoss and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As anthropologists, we offer this book about aging in a wide variety of human societies in the hope of its making three contributions. First, this book will help to remedy a massive neglect of old age by the discipline of anthropology. The pioneering work of Leo Simmons (1945) has remained a lonely monument since the 1940's, for despite recent interest in the subject of aging in modern Western societies on the part of social gerontologists and sociologists, little has been done by anthropologists on aging in non-Western societies. Where it has been treated at all, it has been in the form either of a few final paragraphs in the discussion of the life cycle or of a simple ethnographic fact among other facts about a certain social system. What has been missing has been any attempt to put aging in a cross-cultural or comparative perspective, to give this vital subject the same treatment that has been accorded marriage, for example, or death or inheritance or sex roles. Second, this book will bring a needed cross-cultural perspective to the study of social gerontology. The recent explosion of interest in this field has been largely confined to the study of aging in North America and Europe. But we anthropologists feel that such a culturally limited study, though interesting and productive in its own right, is dangerously narrow if it does not consider what aging is like in other societies. What aspects of aging, for example, are human universals and have to be planned for as inevitable, and what aspects are cultural particulars and can be avoided, modified, or strengthened under certain social conditions? By presenting both a biological account of the universals of human aging (Weiss), and specific ethnographic accounts of aging in a wide variety of societies, we believe we can help to put North American aging into perspective Third, we hope this book will serve as an illustration of a particular anthropological approach to unity and diversity in human societies and cultures. Perhaps the main task of sociocultural anthropology is a twofold one: the explanation of cross-cultural universals, somehow rooted either in the biological nature of the human species or in universal imperatives of social organization, and the explanation of intercultural variations, rooted in a dialectical interaction between culture and the material conditions (partially created by culture) in which it exists. If unity and diversity can indeed be explained in this way, the cross-cultural study of aging can serve as a paradigm. By first setting out what seem to be the universals determined by the biology of the human species, and by then exploring the range of variation in cultural solutions, we ought to be able to formulate a set of principles that will allow us to explain why variations occur in a certain way. Nine ethnographic case studies are enough, we believe, to enable us to formulate some preliminary hypotheses about the nature and causes of variation in the social process of aging.
Download or read book Rituals of Care written by Felicity Aulino and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aulino's work is a strong contribution to the study of aging in the field of medical anthropology specifically because of the focus on the embodied performativity of care evident in her research practice and analysis. Rituals of Care is an excellent book, which offers a thoughtful approach to everyday care in Thailand. ― Anthropology & Aging End-of-life issues are increasingly central to discussions within medical anthropology, the anthropology of political action, and the study of Buddhist philosophy and practice. Felicity Aulino's Rituals of Care speaks directly to these important anthropological and existential conversations. Against the backdrop of global population aging and increased attention to care for the elderly, both personal and professional, Aulino challenges common presumptions about the universal nature of "caring." The way she examines particular sets of emotional and practical ways of being with people, and their specific historical lineages, allows Aulino to show an inseparable link between forms of social organization and forms of care. Unlike most accounts of the quotidian concerns of providing care in a rapidly aging society, Rituals of Care brings attention to corporeal processes. Moving from vivid descriptions of the embodied routines at the heart of home caregiving to depictions of care practices in more general ways—care for one's group, care of the polity—it develops the argument that religious, social, and political structures are embodied, through habituated action, in practices of providing for others. Under the watchful treatment of Aulino, care becomes a powerful foil for understanding recent political turmoil and structural change in Thailand, proving embodied practice to be a vital vantage point for phenomenological and political analyses alike.
Download or read book Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Italy written by Shireen Walton and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-05-06 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Who am I at this (st)age? Where am I and where should I be, and how and where should I live?’ These questions, which individuals ask themselves throughout their lives, are among the central themes of this book, which presents an anthropological account of the everyday experiences of age and ageing in an inner-city neighbourhood in Milan, and in places and spaces beyond. Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Italy explores ageing and digital technologies amidst a backdrop of rapid global technological innovation, including mHealth (mobile health) and smart cities, and a number of wider socio-economic and technological transformations that have brought about significant changes in how people live, work and retire, and how they communicate and care for each other. Based on 16 months of urban digital ethnographic research in Milan, the smartphone is shown to be a ‘constant companion’ in, of and for contemporary life. It accompanies people throughout the day and night, and through individual and collective experiences of movement, change and rupture. Smartphone practices tap into and reflect the moral anxieties of the present moment, while posing questions related to life values and purpose, identities and belonging, privacy and sociability. Through her extensive investigation, Shireen Walton argues that ageing with smartphones in this contemporary urban Italian context is about living with ambiguity, change and contradiction, as well as developing curiosities about a changing world, our changing selves, and changing relationships with and to others. Ageing with smartphones is about figuring out how best to live together, differently.
Download or read book The New American Servitude written by Cati Coe and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines why African care workers feel politically excluded from the United States Care for America’s growing elderly population is increasingly provided by migrants, and the demand for health care labor is only expected to grow. Because of this health care crunch and the low barriers to entry, new African immigrants have adopted elder care as a niche employment sector, funneling their friends and relatives into this occupation. However, elder care puts care workers into racialized, gendered, and age hierarchies, making it difficult for them to achieve social and economic mobility. In The New American Servitude, Coe demonstrates how these workers often struggle to find a sense of political and social belonging. They are regularly subjected to racial insults and demonstrations of power—and effectively turned into servants—at the hands of other members of the care worker network, including clients and their relatives, agency staff, and even other care workers. Low pay, a lack of benefits, and a lack of stable employment, combined with a lack of appreciation for their efforts, often alienate them, so that many come to believe that they cannot lead valuable lives in the United States. While jobs are a means of acculturating new immigrants, African care workers don’t tend to become involved or politically active. Many plan to leave rather than putting down roots in the US. Offering revealing insights into the dark side of a burgeoning economy, The New American Servitude carries serious implications for the future of labor and justice in the care work industry.
Download or read book Growing Old in a New China written by Rose K. Keimig and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-12 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing Old in a New China: Transitions in Elder Care is an accessible exploration of changing care arrangements in China. Combining anthropological theory, ethnographic vignettes, and cultural and social history, it sheds light on the growing movement from home-based to institutional elder care in urban China. The book examines how tensions between old and new ideas, desires, and social structures are reshaping the experience of caring and being cared for. Weaving together discussions of family ethics, care work, bioethics, aging, and quality of life, this book puts older adults at the center of the story. It explores changing relationships between elders and themselves, their family members, caregivers, society, and the state, and the attempts made within and across these relational webs to find balance and harmony. The book invites readers to ponder the deep implications of how and why we care and the ways end-of-life care arrangements complicate both living and dying for many elders.
Download or read book Anthropology and Aging written by Robert L. Rubinstein and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was conceived as a project of the Association for Anthropology and Gerontology, a multidisciplinary and international organization, formed in 1978, that is dedicated to the exploration and understanding of aging within and across the diversity of human cultures. The perspective of the Association is holistic, comparative and international. Membership is drawn from both academic and applied sectors and includes the social and biological sciences, medicine, urban planning, policy studies, social work and the development, administration and provision of services for the aged. Information about membership may be obtained from Dr. Eunice Boyer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin WI, 53141 USA. Vll ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In a collective enterprise such as this, there are many people who have helped us along the way. Many members of the Association for Anthropology and Gerontology and many other colleagues gave us advice, read and commented on drafts of papers and otherwise supported this project. The editors and individual authors would like to acknowledge the following for their support and help; Baine B. Alexander, Steve Albert, C.C. Ballew, Diana Bethel, Jacob Climo, Ann Dill, Jean De Rousseau, Nancy Foner, Doris Francis, Mel Goldstein, Ralph Garruto, Tony Glascock, Charlotte Ikels, Sharon Kaufman, Jeanie Kayser-Jones, S. Loth, Mark Luborsky, Linda Mitteness, Corinne Nydegger, J.D. Pearson, David Plath, J.P. Ritchie, Phil Stafford, Rachael Stark, Maria Vesperi, Marjorie Schweitzer, Jay Sokolovsky, Toni Tripp Reimer, Martin Whyte, and Connie Wolfsen. ix ROBERT L.
Download or read book Anthropology of Aging written by Marjorie M. Schweitzer and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1991-06-19 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1970s, Comparative Cultural Gerontology or the Anthropology of Aging, with its focus on aging from a cross-cultural perspective, attained the status of a new speciality in the field of anthropology. It was only in the late 1960s to the mid-70s that elderly people and the process of aging became recognized as a bona fide research topic for anthropology. Majorie M. Schweitzer's Anthropology of Aging looks at aging from this cross-cultural perspective and updates the Association for Anthropology and Gerontology's previously published Topical Bibliography and the Supplement to the Topical Bibliography on the Anthropology of Aging. Schweitzer focuses on citations that represent anthropological perspectives and/or cross-cultural data, with data from other disciplines included when warranted. Besides a greatly expanded number of bibliographical references, Schweitzer's work includes annotations for particularly important citations including those that address special issues, such as method and theory as they relate to aging, and those that provide the clearest treatment of a particular topic. The topical outline of the 1982 volume has been retained with only minor additions and changes making the Bibliography both easy to use and a rich resource for researchers. Over 40 international scholars in the field of aging have updated the various sections of the original bibliography. Organized according to two kinds of topics: subject topics, such as Modernization; and regional/cultural group topics, such as Great Britain/American Indian, the reference contains 14 chapters that investigate research on the subject from Africa to the Pacific Rim, USSR, USA, Europe, Israel, and more. Beginning with a chapter that zeroes in on general, theoretical, and comparative works, the volume procedes with chapters that examine demography, biology, and longevity, medical aspects of aging, non-industrialized societies, national cultures, modernization, and ethnic/rural segments of the United States. The last six chapters examine social structure; community organization, and age-homogeneous residences; urban aged, social networks, support systems; women; death and dying; and methods. The final chapter contains a list of additional bibliographies. A must for most research libraries, this comprehensive bibliography will be widely used by teachers, students, researchers, social workers, service providers and administrators from many different disciplines.
