August 21st is National Senior Citizens Day! On this day, we are encouraged to honor, recognize and show appreciation for the value and contribution of elderly people to home, family and society across the United States.
To honor the day, Berghahn is happy to present Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations Series.
The series is published under the auspices of the Association for Anthropology and Gerontology (AAGE) and the American Anthropological Association Interest Group on Aging and the Life Course. It engages a cross-cultural framework to explore the role of older adults in changing cultural spaces and how this evolves in our rapidly globalizing planet. For more information please visit series webpage.
New!
Volume 3
AGING AND THE DIGITAL LIFE COURSE
Edited by David Prendergast and Chiara Garattini
“This book presents us with an interesting study of how various technologies, including web-based tools and information and communication technologies, are embedded in particular social processes and experiences of aging and the life course. Instead of taking the usual position that ‘technology’ is something that is consumed and thrust upon us . . . this book shows how technologies are themselves a set of relations and processes that are open to change.” · Philip Kao, University of Pittsburgh
Across the life course, new forms of community, ways of keeping in contact, and practices for engaging in work, healthcare, retail, learning and leisure are evolving rapidly. Breaking new ground in the study of technology and aging, this book examines how developments in smart phones, the internet, cloud computing, and online social networking are redefining experiences and expectations around growing older in the twenty-first century. Drawing on contributions from leading commentators and researchers across the world, this book explores key themes such as caregiving, the use of social media, robotics, chronic disease and dementia management, gaming, migration, and data inheritance, to name a few.
Volume 2
UNFORGOTTEN
Love and the Culture of Dementia Care in India
Bianca Brijnath
“Bianca Brijnath has written a beautiful book with Unforgotten…By weaving together the journeys of anthropological research and those of her informants in the style of a Bollywood masala – ‘productions…[that] incorporate romance, drama, action, comedy and tragedy…[in which the] linearity of the story is unimportant [and] there are frequent interruptions for songs, subplots and audience intermissions’ (158) – her aim that readers ‘smell the writing’ (36) is fulfilled.” · Contemporary South Asia
As life expectancy increases in India, the number of people living with dementia will also rise. Yet little is known about how people in India cope with dementia, how relationships and identities change through illness and loss. In addressing this question, this book offers a rich ethnographic account of how middle-class families in urban India care for their relatives with dementia. From the husband who wakes up at 3 am to feed his wife ice-cream to the daughters who gave up employment for seven years to care for their mother with dementia, this book illuminates the local idioms on dementia and aging, the personal experience of care-giving, the functioning of stigma in daily life, and the social and cultural barriers in accessing support.
New in Paperback!
Volume 1
TRANSITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS
Cultural Perspectives on Aging and the Life Course
Edited by Caitrin Lynch and Jason Danely
Afterword by Jennifer Cole, University of Chicago
“This volume is full of good writing, lively situations, some wonderful photos, revealing quotes and simulating ideas. Its readability makes it appealing as a text to be used widely in the undergraduate/graduate classroom… the current volume makes for excellent reading and launches the new Berghahn book series admirably.” · Anthropology of Aging Quarterly Review
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.
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Don’t forget to browse relevant articles from Berghahn Journals:
Globalization and Ageing in India
International Journal of Social Quality, Volume 1, Number 1
Aging, Family, and Preferences for Care among Older Jews and Arabs
Israel Studies Review, Volume 28, Number 2
Attraction, Amusement, and Anxiety: Aging Women in Vārānāsī
Social Analysis, Volume 52, Number 3
Aging Away: Immigrant Families, Elderly Care, Ethnography and Policy
Anthropology in Action, Volume 14, Numbers 1-2