{"title":"INTRODUCTION: COVID19 and Aging Bodies – What Do We Mean When We Say That Older Adults Are Most ‘Affected’ by COVID-19?","authors":"C. Verbruggen","doi":"10.5195/aa.2020.325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2020.325","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>n/a</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":42395,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology & Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42203871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work","authors":"Carlos Chirinos","doi":"10.5195/aa.2020.294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2020.294","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>n/a</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":42395,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology & Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45493780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Of Public Spaces and Later-life Amity in Urban India: Gerontological Musings in Pandemic Times","authors":"Tannistha Samanta","doi":"10.5195/aa.2020.313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2020.313","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>n/a</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":42395,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology & Aging","volume":"41 1","pages":"147-154"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42467418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article we put the themes of gender, agency, food tradition, and time, which are central to the food studies literature into conversation with the research on aging and food security to offer an intersectional analysis of older African-American women’s foodways. In particular, we explore how income, age, gender, and time intertwine to inform older African-American women’s everyday actions and activities related to food provisioning, including shopping, cooking, and eating. Grounding our analysis in a “food tense” perspective, we examine how past experiences shape current food acquisition strategies and preferences, and how seniors’ desires for health and longevity serve as a cornerstone of future foodways. Further, we consider food tradition, food knowledge, and thrifty know-how, as a forms of gendered cultural capital, that generate alternative resources, meanings, and explanations of older women’s foodways. This multidimensional and future inclusive approach to understanding seniors’ food resources not only challenges the point-in-time, income-expenditure, and life course frameworks used in food security research, but provides insights into the complex and fluid factors that shape seniors’ orientation and relationship to food.
{"title":"Food Roots & Today’s Pantry: The Multiple Meanings of “Thrifty Know-How” among Older African American Women","authors":"Katherine Lambert-Pennington, Lyndsey Pender","doi":"10.5195/aa.2020.265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2020.265","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we put the themes of gender, agency, food tradition, and time, which are central to the food studies literature into conversation with the research on aging and food security to offer an intersectional analysis of older African-American women’s foodways. In particular, we explore how income, age, gender, and time intertwine to inform older African-American women’s everyday actions and activities related to food provisioning, including shopping, cooking, and eating. Grounding our analysis in a “food tense” perspective, we examine how past experiences shape current food acquisition strategies and preferences, and how seniors’ desires for health and longevity serve as a cornerstone of future foodways. Further, we consider food tradition, food knowledge, and thrifty know-how, as a forms of gendered cultural capital, that generate alternative resources, meanings, and explanations of older women’s foodways. This multidimensional and future inclusive approach to understanding seniors’ food resources not only challenges the point-in-time, income-expenditure, and life course frameworks used in food security research, but provides insights into the complex and fluid factors that shape seniors’ orientation and relationship to food.","PeriodicalId":42395,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology & Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43173098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"INTRODUCTION. The Ends of Life: Time and Meaning in Later Years","authors":"I. Kavedžija","doi":"10.5195/aa.2020.320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2020.320","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>-</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":42395,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology & Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43412922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Weaving Flexible Aging-friendly Communities Across Generations While Living with COVID-19","authors":"Nanami Suzuki","doi":"10.5195/aa.2020.311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2020.311","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>n/a</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":42395,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology & Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46248727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In contrast to media images of lonely deaths, stereotypes of the Japanese calm acceptance of dying, and the “naturalness” of dependency in old age or illness, this paper explores the complex ways in which changing perceptions of time refocus people towards the question of how to live. Time both narrows to the level of medication schedules and bodily functions, and expands to more immediate engagement with others in the past and future. The idea of a moral timeline of such changes builds upon recent work in the anthropology of morality by recognizing shifting ideas and actions people take to retain agency through suffering. People near the end of life in Japan commonly employ cultural idioms of effort, reciprocity, and gratitude to express their continual striving to be moral persons in a social world. Ultimately, such efforts determine not only how they see themselves and are seen by others through their final days, but whether theirs will be judged to be a “good death,” and thus the nature of the person’s continued social existence in spirit and memories after death. The moral timeline expressed by many of the people I met reflected intensified concern with becoming a burden and with reciprocity as the end of life came close. For many, that deepened their sense of engagement, sometimes transforming their relationships with others who would survive them or who had preceded them in death. The ethnographic data in this article come from a participant-observation study of adults of all ages with life-threatening illnesses, and from an interview study of frail elderly and their family caregivers in the early 21 century in urban and rural settings.
{"title":"Family, Time, and Meaning toward the End of Life in Japan","authors":"S. Long","doi":"10.5195/aa.2020.246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2020.246","url":null,"abstract":"In contrast to media images of lonely deaths, stereotypes of the Japanese calm acceptance of dying, and the “naturalness” of dependency in old age or illness, this paper explores the complex ways in which changing perceptions of time refocus people towards the question of how to live. Time both narrows to the level of medication schedules and bodily functions, and expands to more immediate engagement with others in the past and future. The idea of a moral timeline of such changes builds upon recent work in the anthropology of morality by recognizing shifting ideas and actions people take to retain agency through suffering. People near the end of life in Japan commonly employ cultural idioms of effort, reciprocity, and gratitude to express their continual striving to be moral persons in a social world. Ultimately, such efforts determine not only how they see themselves and are seen by others through their final days, but whether theirs will be judged to be a “good death,” and thus the nature of the person’s continued social existence in spirit and memories after death. The moral timeline expressed by many of the people I met reflected intensified concern with becoming a burden and with reciprocity as the end of life came close. For many, that deepened their sense of engagement, sometimes transforming their relationships with others who would survive them or who had preceded them in death. The ethnographic data in this article come from a participant-observation study of adults of all ages with life-threatening illnesses, and from an interview study of frail elderly and their family caregivers in the early 21 century in urban and rural settings.","PeriodicalId":42395,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology & Aging","volume":"41 1","pages":"24-45"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46458973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Negotiating Ageing: Cultural Adaptation to the Prospect of a Long Life","authors":"Ashwin Tripathi","doi":"10.5195/aa.2020.297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2020.297","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>n/a</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":42395,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology & Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47972424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In contrast to discourses of “successful aging” which pathologize and individualize change in later life, this case study of a retired Mexican couple highlights the pleasurable, political, and collective aspects of aging. Here, I analyze the narratives of a couple who found aging “well” fulfilling in part because it served as an intervention into societal-level problems. I argue that their activist form of aging was enabled by local cultural understandings of the Mexican populace as a biologically and socially interrelated whole. They hoped that the Mexican social body would follow a particular life course – of maturing toward modernity – and they sought to model and promote such maturation in their own later lives. This included promoting a health “culture of prevention,” living out self-consciously modern forms of gender and family, and active community participation. I assert that their happiness in older age, including their ability to cope with local crises of violence and corruption, stemmed partly from their belief that the attributes and activities which enhanced their own lives simultaneously served as activist interventions into the broader populace’s ills. This discussion of the context-specific ways one Mexican couple saw their efforts to live good later lives as contributing meaningfully to societal change over time highlights the need to understand aging and later life as political arenas with collective rather than merely individual import.
{"title":"Aging well as activism: Advancing the Mexican social body through individually successful aging","authors":"E. Wentzell","doi":"10.5195/aa.2020.247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2020.247","url":null,"abstract":"In contrast to discourses of “successful aging” which pathologize and individualize change in later life, this case study of a retired Mexican couple highlights the pleasurable, political, and collective aspects of aging. Here, I analyze the narratives of a couple who found aging “well” fulfilling in part because it served as an intervention into societal-level problems. I argue that their activist form of aging was enabled by local cultural understandings of the Mexican populace as a biologically and socially interrelated whole. They hoped that the Mexican social body would follow a particular life course – of maturing toward modernity – and they sought to model and promote such maturation in their own later lives. This included promoting a health “culture of prevention,” living out self-consciously modern forms of gender and family, and active community participation. I assert that their happiness in older age, including their ability to cope with local crises of violence and corruption, stemmed partly from their belief that the attributes and activities which enhanced their own lives simultaneously served as activist interventions into the broader populace’s ills. This discussion of the context-specific ways one Mexican couple saw their efforts to live good later lives as contributing meaningfully to societal change over time highlights the need to understand aging and later life as political arenas with collective rather than merely individual import.","PeriodicalId":42395,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology & Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46867732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}