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Transitions and Transformations: Cultural Perspectives on Aging and the Life Course
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.
280 pages, Library Binding
First published January 1, 2013
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June 9, 2013
Transitions and Transformations, Edited by Caitrin Lynch and Jason Danely, is a collection of thirteen ethnographically rich chapters on the experience of aging and the life course around the world today. It is intended for students and scholars in the field of cultural anthropology, social gerontology and human development, but also provides insights useful to readers interested in aging psychology, social work, nursing, political science, family studies, childhood studies, and other social science fields. It is written to be accessible to those with little or no background in the study of aging but who are interested in seeing how ethnographic studies of aging and the life course provide a more holistic view of current global changes in cultual and population dynamics.
The broad aims of the book are to expand the study of aging in anthropology towards a more integrated life-course generational perspective and to mainstream this persepective within cultural anthropology by underlining its fundamental impact on every scale of social life and its increasing importance in understanding global population change.
Danely and Lynch's Introduction and Bateson's chapter on 'Strengths and Stages' provide the reader with a general historical and conceptual orientation for the chapters that follow. Together, they review the ways aging and the life course has been approached within anthropology, and the frame the current state of the field. Both chapters see the challenge of cultural anthropology as understanding the way individual-centered life-course developmental transitions (biophysical, mental, phenomenological, narratological, etc.) are both the product of and producer of global life-course transformations (demographic, political, economic, health and longevity, popular representations, etc.).
The following chapters are organized in sections that begin with the most intimate experiences of the aging Body (Martin, Shea, Wentzell) and ripple out to experiences of identity, place and space (Robbins, Norwood, Danely), Family (Brown, Rodriguez -Galan, Gamburd), and finally to Economics (Lynch, Lamb, Guyer/Salami). Each section is nested within each other, and the authors frequently cross-reference each other to help the reader see the connections more clearly. Together the chapters address not only aging, but also gender, labor, religion, care, emotion, policy, immigration, and health. Each includes vivid details and insights drawn from first-hand experiences in the field, which includes India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Nigeria, The Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, and the US.
The Afterword, written by Jennifer Cole, brings a fresh 'cultural perspective' from a scholar who has focused mainly on generational transitions and transformations and youth. Cole recognizes the importance of the book as a contribution towards constructing a critical perspective on the often taken-for-granted or over-simplified (usually alarmist) story of global aging.
As one of the editors of Transitions and Transformations, I have tried to steer clear of evaluative statements in this review (although I have no problem giving it five stars!), but I will say that it is the culmination of several years of hard work on the part of my co-editor, Caitrin Lynch, the many contributors, the series editor Jay Sokolovsky, and the staff at Berghahn Books. I am incredibly pleased with the results of this great and passionate group of people and I hope that this book proves to be an important resource for continuing the discussion on global aging.
The broad aims of the book are to expand the study of aging in anthropology towards a more integrated life-course generational perspective and to mainstream this persepective within cultural anthropology by underlining its fundamental impact on every scale of social life and its increasing importance in understanding global population change.
Danely and Lynch's Introduction and Bateson's chapter on 'Strengths and Stages' provide the reader with a general historical and conceptual orientation for the chapters that follow. Together, they review the ways aging and the life course has been approached within anthropology, and the frame the current state of the field. Both chapters see the challenge of cultural anthropology as understanding the way individual-centered life-course developmental transitions (biophysical, mental, phenomenological, narratological, etc.) are both the product of and producer of global life-course transformations (demographic, political, economic, health and longevity, popular representations, etc.).
The following chapters are organized in sections that begin with the most intimate experiences of the aging Body (Martin, Shea, Wentzell) and ripple out to experiences of identity, place and space (Robbins, Norwood, Danely), Family (Brown, Rodriguez -Galan, Gamburd), and finally to Economics (Lynch, Lamb, Guyer/Salami). Each section is nested within each other, and the authors frequently cross-reference each other to help the reader see the connections more clearly. Together the chapters address not only aging, but also gender, labor, religion, care, emotion, policy, immigration, and health. Each includes vivid details and insights drawn from first-hand experiences in the field, which includes India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Nigeria, The Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, and the US.
The Afterword, written by Jennifer Cole, brings a fresh 'cultural perspective' from a scholar who has focused mainly on generational transitions and transformations and youth. Cole recognizes the importance of the book as a contribution towards constructing a critical perspective on the often taken-for-granted or over-simplified (usually alarmist) story of global aging.
As one of the editors of Transitions and Transformations, I have tried to steer clear of evaluative statements in this review (although I have no problem giving it five stars!), but I will say that it is the culmination of several years of hard work on the part of my co-editor, Caitrin Lynch, the many contributors, the series editor Jay Sokolovsky, and the staff at Berghahn Books. I am incredibly pleased with the results of this great and passionate group of people and I hope that this book proves to be an important resource for continuing the discussion on global aging.
Displaying 1 of 1 review