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.