Anthropological Perspectives on Aging

Anthropological Perspectives on Aging PDF Author: Britteny M. Howell
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813072573
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
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.

Towards a Medical Anthropology of Ageing

Towards a Medical Anthropology of Ageing PDF Author: Miguel Kottow
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527520005
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
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.

Anthropological Perspectives on Aging

Anthropological Perspectives on Aging PDF Author: Britteny M. Howell
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813072573
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Ethics, Health Policy and (Anti-) Aging: Mixed Blessings

Ethics, Health Policy and (Anti-) Aging: Mixed Blessings PDF Author: Maartje Schermer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400738706
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This volume focuses on the ethical and philosophical issues that arise in an aging society, and the implications of these issues for healthcare and social policy. After a brief overview of biomedicine's changing approach of ageing and longevity and of the new expectations that these changes generate, various ethical, social, and policy issues that surround aging and longevity are discussed. First, the images and social meanings of aging and old age in our society are explored, including their normative dimensions and implications for policy. Next, ethical issues in the care for frail elderly are discussed, as well as notion of good care and end-of-life decisions. Finally, the ethical and social implications of emerging possibilities for anti-aging and lifespan extension are considered. The book concludes with an overview of the relevance of the issues discussed for policy making on professional, national and international levels.​

Aspiring in Later Life

Aspiring in Later Life PDF Author: Megha Amrith
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978830424
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
In our highly interconnected and globalized world, people often pursue their aspirations in multiple places. Yet in public and scholarly debates, aspirations are often seen as the realm of younger, mobile generations, since they are assumed to hold the greatest potential for shaping the future. This volume flips this perspective on its head by exploring how aspirations are constructed from the vantage point of later life, and shows how they are pursued across time, space, and generations. The aspirations of older people are diverse, and relate not only to aging itself but also to planning the next generation’s future, preparing an "ideal" retirement, searching for intimacy and self-realization, and confronting death and afterlives. Aspiring in Later Life brings together rich ethnographic cases from different regions of the world, offering original insights into how aspirations shift over the course of life and how they are pursued in contexts of translocal mobility. This book is also freely available online as an open-access digital edition.​ Download the open access book here.

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course PDF Author: Cathrine Degnen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137566426
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Exploring notions of the person through a wide range of anthropological literature, Cathrine Degnen analyses how personhood is built, affirmed, and maintained during various life stages and via multiple cultural forms and practices. In discussing the life course, she investigates personhood as a concept at the beginning of life, throughout life as lived, at the edges of being, and ultimately at life’s end. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course moves beyond the human person in isolation to consider how personhood is fashioned with regard to place and how non-humans can also be recognised as persons. Through multiple ethnographic accounts, Degnen shows that personhood emerges as a relational and processual entity, brought into being via reciprocal fields of social relations.

The Global Age-Friendly Community Movement

The Global Age-Friendly Community Movement PDF Author: Philip B. Stafford
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785336681
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
The age-friendly community movement is a global phenomenon, currently growing with the support of the WHO and multiple international and national organizations in the field of aging. Drawing on an extensive collection of international case studies, this volume provides an introduction to the movement. The contributors – both researchers and practitioners – touch on a number of current tensions and issues in the movement and offer a wide-ranging set of recommendations for advancing age-friendly community development. The book concludes with a call for a radical transformation of a medical and lifestyle model of aging into a relational model of health and social/individual wellbeing.

Guide

Guide PDF Author: American Anthropological Association
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 756

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Book Description


Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Social Gerontology

Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Social Gerontology PDF Author: Tannistha Samanta
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811016542
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This volume intends to re-establish social gerontology as a discipline that has pragmatic links to policy and practice. Collectively, the chapters enrich public debates about the moral, cultural and economic questions surrounding aging, thereby ameliorating the “problems” associated with aging societies. This volume is uniquely cross-cultural, theory-driven and cross-disciplinary. It fills a gap in the gerontological scholarship of the global south that is predominantly descriptive and empirical. Based on original research, this volume examines in particular the sociological question of inequality and its intersection with age, gender, health, family and social relations. In the process, the studies herein highlight the unique historical, institutional and social systems that govern the subjective experience of aging in diverse contexts globally. Specifically, societies in transition including India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Japan, China, Israel and in Europe are studied while connecting the micro-social experience of aging (loneliness, wellbeing, discrimination, relationships and resilience) with larger temporal and political contexts. This exercise generates intellectual capital that reformulates links between aging research and policy in innovative ways. Overall, the volume echoes the global scientific commitment to understand the socio-cultural process of aging in transitional societies and utilizes rich opportunities for cross-fertilization of ideas, disciplines and methods to advance the gerontological promise of critical inquiry, training and practice.

Human Senescence

Human Senescence PDF Author: Douglas E. Crews
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139441162
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Much research on the biology of senescence is on cell-lines, nematodes or fruit flies, that are only of peripheral relevance to the problems encountered in humans. Human Senescence is a text which reviews the evolutionary biology of human senescence and life span, and the evolutionarily recent development of late-life survival. It examines how human patterns of and variability in growth and development have altered later life survival probabilities and competencies, and how survival during mid-life contributes to senescent dysfunction and alteration. Discussing possibilities of further extending human life span, it gives a better understanding of how humans came to senesce as slowly as we do over our lifespan. Bringing together gerontological, anthropological and biocultural research, it explores human variation in chronic disease, senescence and life span as outcomes of early life adaptation and the success of humankind's sociocultural evolution. It is a benchmark publication for all interested in how and why we age.

Ageing in Sub-Saharan Africa

Ageing in Sub-Saharan Africa PDF Author: Jaco Hoffman
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447325265
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
A collection of in-depth ethnographic analyses of the impact of local and global transformations on the care, or lack of, received by older people in sub-Saharan Africa.