Dancing for Their Lives
The Pursuit of Meaningful Aging in Urban China
Dancing for Their Lives delves into the world of retired Chinese “dancing grannies” who seek fulfillment amid broad social transformation. Based on ethnographic research, it challenges conventional narratives of aging by portraying old age as a site of innovation. It examines how retirees navigate changing norms and offers insights on resilience and meaning in later life that resonate globally.
God's Waiting Room
Racial Reckoning at Life's End
A ghost story rich in mystery and life lessons, God's Waiting Room takes readers on a day-long tour of a tropical nursing home to hear stories of older white people and the younger Black nurses who care for them, showing how people formerly primed to be enemies find grace despite the odds.
More-than-Human Aging
Animals, Robots, and Care in Later Life
Aging is not only reserved for humans. Similarly, how humans age is often a process in which other-than-humans – be it other species or technology – become entangled or carved out. The contributions to this edited volume open a conversation about how aging is always a hybrid, more-than-human process.
More-than-Human Aging
Animals, Robots, and Care in Later Life
Aging is not only reserved for humans. Similarly, how humans age is often a process in which other-than-humans – be it other species or technology – become entangled or carved out. The contributions to this edited volume open a conversation about how aging is always a hybrid, more-than-human process.
Aspiring in Later Life
Movements across Time, Space, and Generations
While aspirations are most often connected to younger people, this volume argues that people do not stop aspiring in older age. Aspiring in Later Life brings together rich ethnographic cases from different regions of the world, offering original insights into how aspirations are pursued over the course of life and in contexts of globalization and mobility.
This book is also freely available online as an open-access digital edition.
Changes in Care
Aging, Migration, and Social Class in West Africa
As Africa’s population ages, the inadequacy of kin care becomes more visible. In Ghana, older people and their allies are developing fragile initiatives and programs beyond the norm of kin care. Changes in Care examines aging in Ghana as a way of understanding the unevenness of social change more widely.
Aging in a Changing World
Older New Zealanders and Contemporary Multiculturalism
Embracing Age
How Catholic Nuns Became Models of Aging Well
Growing Old in a New China
Transitions in Elder Care
Aging Nationally in Contemporary Poland
Memory, Kinship, and Personhood
In Poland, active aging programs both take on meanings associated with the country’s transition from socialism to capitalism and exceed such narratives of progress by resonating with older forms of activity in late life. Through intimate portrayals of a wide range of experiences of aging, Aging Nationally in Contemporary Poland shows how everyday practices and shared ideas about the Polish nation offer possibilities for living a valued, meaningful life in old age.
Through Japanese Eyes
Thirty Years of Studying Aging in America
Through Japanese Eyes offers an ethnography of aging in America from a cross-cultural perspective based on a lengthy period of research. It illustrates how older Americans cope with the gap between the ideal (e.g., independence) and the real (e.g., needing assistance) of growing older, and the changes the author observed over thirty years of research.
Linked Lives
Elder Care, Migration, and Kinship in Sri Lanka
Gray Matters
Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life
Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life examines films, literature, and art that focus on aging, often made by people who are over sixty-five. These texts are analyzed alongside recent gerontology research and extensive commentary from interviews and surveys of seniors to show how "stories" illuminate the dynamics of growing old by blending fact with imagination, giving a fuller picture of the aging process.