No Aging in India

Alzheimer's, The Bad Family, and Other Modern Things
1. Auflage 2000
ISBN: 978-0-520-22462-9
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 400 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 653 g

From the opening sequence, in which mid-nineteenth-century Indian fishermen hear the possibility of redemption in an old woman's madness, No Aging in India captures the reader with its interplay of story and analysis. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic work, Lawrence Cohen links a detailed investigation of mind and body in old age in four neighborhoods of the Indian city of Varanasi (Banaras) with events and processes around India and around the world. This compelling exploration of senility—encompassing not only the aging body but also larger cultural anxieties—combines insights from medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies. Bridging literary genres as well as geographic spaces, Cohen responds to what he sees as the impoverishment of both North American and Indian gerontologies—the one mired in ambivalence toward demented old bodies, the other insistent on a dubious morality tale of modern families breaking up and abandoning their elderly. He shifts our attention irresistibly toward how old age comes to matter in the constitution of societies and their narratives of identity and history.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cohen, Lawrence

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Altersgruppen Alterssoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
THE GROUND OF THE ARGUMENT 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION, TRANSLATION, AND TRANSLITERATION

INTRODUCTION 
The Mad Old Woman of the Millennium 
The Age of Alzheimer's 
The View from the River 

Dulari 
1. ORIENTATIONS 
The ,Zagreb Tamasha 
Whats Wrong with This Picture? 
The Better Brain 
Tropical Softening 
Embodying Probate 
A Medical Explanation 
The Senile Body 
An Anthropological Picaresque 
Of Varanasi

World Wide Web 
2. ALZHEIMER'S HELL
No Aging in America! Leading Scientists Reveal 
Alzheimer's Subjectivity, and the the Old West 
The Geriatric Paradox 
Oublier Postmodern Aging 
A Witch's Curse 
The Senile Climacteric 
Alzheimer's Family 

Nuns and Doctors 
3. KNOWLEDGE, PRACTICE, AND THE BAD FAMILY 
On Gerontological Objects 
The 'Aging in India" Series 
Internationalist Science 
The "Golden Isles" 
Gerontology as Cultural Critique 
BP Checks:The Volunteer Agency 
Free Radical Exchange:The Geriatric Clinic 
Into the Woods:The Retirement Ashram 
Mothers versus Aunties: The Old Age Home 

Aitasaa Pralapa 
MEMORY BANKS 
The Embodiment of Anxiety 
The Promise of Rasayana 
The Marketing of Memory 
Memory and Capital 
Forgetting as a Path to Truth 

Meri Lata Mahan 
THE ANGER OF THE RISHIS
Hot Brains 
Sixtyishness and Seventy-twoness 
Oedipus in India 
Counting the Days and Hours
Old Women at the Polls 
The Phenomenology of the Voice 
The Familial Body 
The Dying Space 
Taking Voices Seriously 

The Philosophers Mother 
6. THE MALADJUSTMENT OF THE BOURGEOISIE 
Civility and Contest 
Balance and Adjustment 
Senility and Madness 
Loneliness and Menopause 
Balance and Cartesian Possibility 
The Dementia Clinic 

The Way to the Indies, to the Fountain of Jouth 
7. CHAPATI BODIES 
Nagwa by Its Residents 
Weakness as Structure 
Muslims and Other Saints 
Generation and Weakness Revisited 
Jhandu and the Sound of Dying
The Position of Repose 

A Child Is Being Lifted 
8. DOG LADIES AND THE BERIYA BABA 
Dogs and Old Women 
Old Women and Madwomen 
Madwomen and Witches 
Dogs and Old Men 
Old Men and Babas 
Babas and the State 

The Age of the Anthropologist 
9. THE BODY IN TIME 
My Grandmother's Letters
No One Here Cares about Alzheimer's 
Lost at the Fair 

A Last Few Trips up the River 

NOTES 
GLOSSARY 
REFERENCES 
INDEX

Über Autor(innen)

Lawrence Cohen is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Critical Studies of Medicine, Science, and the Body at the University of California, Berkeley.