Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession

Global Perspectives

Edited by Sarah Lamb; Epilogue by Susan Reynolds Whyte

SERIES: Global Perspectives on Aging

Rutgers University Press

In recent decades, the North American public has pursued an inspirational vision of successful aging—striving through medical technique and individual effort to eradicate the declines, vulnerabilities, and dependencies previously commonly associated with old age. On the face of it, this bold new vision of successful, healthy, and active aging is highly appealing. But it also rests on a deep cultural discomfort with aging and being old.

The contributors to Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession explore how the successful aging movement is playing out across five continents. Their chapters investigate a variety of people, including Catholic nuns in the United States; Hindu ashram dwellers; older American women seeking plastic surgery; aging African-American lesbians and gay men in the District of Columbia; Chicago home health care workers and their aging clients; Mexican men foregoing Viagra; dementia and Alzheimer sufferers in the United States and Brazil; and aging policies in Denmark, Poland, India, China, Japan, and Uganda. This book offers a fresh look at a major cultural and public health movement of our time, questioning what has become for many a taken-for-granted goal—aging in a way that almost denies aging itself.

With public conversation about control of aging at an all-time high, these rich ethnographies from around the globe challenge stereotypes of success, failure, and ageism as they illustrate how vitality and vulnerability, independence, need, and care are resourcefully enacted. A timely corrective, this volume is essential for anyone interested in the diverse practices of interdependence and self-making in the world's ever-aging societies. Sharon R. Kaufman, author of Ordinary Medicine

Lamb provides incisive deconstruction of modern notions of ‘successful aging,’ offering a wealth of theoretical perspectives on, and ethnographic illustrations of, approaches to aging in different cultural settings across the globe. Jeanne Shea, Department of Anthropology and Center on Aging, University of Vermont

[A] valuable aspect of Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession is its global perspective....Lamb has done extensive fieldwork in West Bengal, where, far from being idealized, 'too much independence is commonly regarded as the worst thing that can befall one in old age.' This Chair Rocks

The book offers insightful and sometimes highly emotional accounts of how we find meaning in the limits of our human condition, making it a delightful read regardless of one’s professional orientation. Anthropology News

SARAH LAMB is a professor of anthropology at Brandeis University. She is the author of White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender, and Body in North India.

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Successful Aging as a Twenty-first-Century Obsession
Sarah Lamb, Jessica Robbins-Ruszkowski, and Anna Corwin

Part I   Gender, Sexuality, and the Allure of Anti-Aging
1   Successful Aging, Ageism, and the Maintenance of Age and Gender Relations
Toni Calasanti and Neal King
2   Opting In or Opting Out? North American Women Share Strategies for Aging Successfully with (and without) Cosmetic Intervention
Abigail T. Brooks
3   Aging Out: Ageism, Heterosexism, and Racism among Aging African American Lesbians and Gay Men
Imani Woody
4   Erectile Dysfunction as Successful Aging in Mexico
Emily Wentzell

Part II   Ideals of Independence, Interdependence, and Intimate Sociality in Later Life
5   Beyond Independence: Older Chicagoans Living Valued Lives
Elana D. Buch
6   Growing Old with God: An Alternative Vision of Successful Aging among Catholic Nuns
Anna I. Corwin
7   Aspiring to Activity: Universities of the Third Age, Gardening, and Other Forms of Living in Postsocialist Poland
Jessica Robbins-Ruszkowski
8   Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot? Friendship in the Face of Dementia
Janelle S. Taylor

Part III   National Policies and Everyday Practices: Individual and Collective Projects of Aging Well
9   Getting Old and Keeping Going: The Motivation Technologies of Active Aging in Denmark
Aske Juul Lassen and Astrid Pernille Jespersen
10   Foolish Vitality: Humor, Risk, and Success in Japan
Jason Danely
11   Nurturing Life in Contemporary Beijing
Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang
12   Depreciating Age, Disintegrating Ties: On Being Old in a Century of Declining Elderhood in Kenya
Janet McIntosh

Part IV   Medicine, Morality, and Self: Lessons from Life’s Ends
13   Successful Selves? Heroic Tales of Alzheimer’s Disease and Personhood in Brazil
Annette Leibing
14   Comfortable Aging: Lessons for Living from Eighty-five and Beyond
Meika Loe
15   Ageless Aging or Meaningful Decline? Aspirations of Aging and Dying in the United States and India
Sarah Lamb

Epilogue: Successful Aging and Desired Interdependence

Susan Reynolds Whyte
Notes on Contributors
Index

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