White Saris and Sweet Mangoes

Aging, Gender, and Body in North India
1. Auflage 2000
ISBN: 978-0-520-22001-0
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 323 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 151 mm x 227 mm, Gewicht: 472 g

This rich ethnography explores beliefs and practices surrounding aging in a rural Bengali village. Sarah Lamb focuses on how villagers' visions of aging are tied to the making and unmaking of gendered selves and social relations over a lifetime. Lamb uses a focus on age as a means not only to open up new ways of thinking about South Asian social life, but also to contribute to contemporary theories of gender, the body, and culture, which have been hampered, the book argues, by a static focus on youth.

Lamb's own experiences in the village are an integral part of her book and ably convey the cultural particularities of rural Bengali life and Bengali notions of modernity. In exploring ideals of family life and the intricate interrelationships between and within generations, she enables us to understand how people in the village construct, and deconstruct, their lives. At the same time her study extends beyond India to contemporary attitudes about aging in the United States. This accessible and engaging book is about deeply human issues and will appeal not only to specialists in South Asian culture, but to anyone interested in families, aging, gender, religion, and the body.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lamb, Sarah

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations List of Tables Preface Note on Translation and Transliteration Introduction: Perspectives through Age  Culture, Gender, and Multivocality  The Anthropology of Aging  The Body in Postmodern and Feminist Anthropology  Living in Mangaldihi  PART I: PERSONS AND FAMILIES  Personhoods  Entering a Net of Maya in Mangaldihi  Open Persons and Substantial Exchanges  Studying Persons Cross-culturally 2 Family Moral Systems  Defining Age  Long-Term Relations: Reciprocity and Indebtedness  Centrality and Peripherality  Hierarchies: Serving and Blessing 3 Conflicting Generations: Unreciprocated  Houseflows in a Modern Society  Contrary Pulls  The Degenerate Ways of Modern Society  Three Lives

PART II: AGING AND DYING  4 White Saris and Sweet Mangoes, Partings and Ties The Problem of Maya Loosening Ties, Disassembling Persons Pilgrims, Beggars, and Old Age Home Dwellers The Joys and Perils of Remaining "Hot" and Central, Even in a Ripe Old Age The Values of Attachment and Renunciation  5 Dealing with Mortality "How Am I Going to Die?" Rituals of Death: Making and Remaking Persons and Families Cutting Maya, the Separating of Ties Extending Continuities

PART III: GENDERED TRANSFORMATIONS  6 Transformations of Gender and Gendered Transformations Gendered Bodies and Everyday Practices Competing Perspectives: Everyday Forms of Resistance The Changes of Age Women, Maya, and Aging  7 A Widow's Bonds Becoming a Widow Sexuality and Slander, Devotion and Destruction Unseverable Bonds  Afterword  Notes  Glossary  References  Index

Über Autor(innen)

Sarah Lamb is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University.