Transitions and Transformations

Cultural Perspectives on Aging and the Life Course

Caitrin Lynch, Jason Danely, Caitrin Lynch, Jason Danely

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780857457790
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gerontology
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

INDEX

Page numbers followed by letters f and t refer to figures and tables, respectively.

A

abandonment, in eldercare narrative, 177–79

active wisdom, in Adulthood II, 28–29

adolescence. See also youth

in Erikson life cycle model, 24–25, 24t

similarity to Adulthood II, 28, 30

adult day centers, in Kyoto, 107–8

adulthood

elusive, 221

in Erikson life cycle model, 24t, 25

stages of, 21

thwarted, 222

transition to, 223–25

Adulthood I

end of, 27

moratorium after, 32

Adulthood II

caretaking in, 29

continuity in choices during, 31–32

description of concept, 21

discontinuity in choices during, 31–32

identity in, 30

meaning in, 32–33

participants in study of, 22

productivity in, 32–33

prosocial activism in, 33

psychosocial crises in, 30

recognition of, 24t, 27–28

role models for, 31

similarity to adolescence, 28, 30

stereotypes of aging and, 28

transitions to, 32–33

wisdom in, 28–29

age

in cultural processes, 222

masculinity belonging to, 67

in Mexican masculinity, 65–68

in patriarchy, 22

age-mate equality, emphasis on, 208

agency, through work, 196–202

age ranks, in life cycle, 9

aging. See also old age

adolescent stereotypes about, 28

alarmist theories of, 19n4

anthropological theory of, 11–12

in Asia, Western stereotypes of, 55

cultural diversity in models of, 5–6

as dynamic process, 5

in families, in India, 173–76

four-generation pattern of, 21

as global crisis, 221

in identifying gengnianqi, 54

identity in, 225

omnipresence of questions about, 219

in public-private spaces, 97–100

scholarship on, 229–30

self-actualization in, 86–88, 91n14

stereotypes about, 28, 45, 193

Third Age perspective on, 124–25

anal stage, in Erikson life cycle model, 23, 24t

ancestors, Japanese. See hotoke

anger

in eldercare decisions, 162–63

in gengnianqi, 59

anthropological methods, in life-course studies, 7

anthropology

cultural differences used in, 5–6

influence on Erikson, 25–26

in life-course approach, 6–7

theory of aging in, 11–12

Arab Spring, 219

arthritis, mis...