Other Ways of Growing Old: Anthropological Perspectives

Published by Stanford University Press 1981

Other Ways of Growing Old

Anthropological Perspectives

Edited by: Pamela T. Amoss and Stevan Harrell

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804766180

Overview
Contents

About this book

As anthropologists, we offer this book about aging in a wide variety of human societies in the hope of its making three contributions. First, this book will help to remedy a massive neglect of old age by the discipline of anthropology. The pioneering work of Leo Simmons (1945) has remained a lonely monument since the 1940's, for despite recent interest in the subject of aging in modern Western societies on the part of social gerontologists and sociologists, little has been done by anthropologists on aging in non-Western societies. Where it has been treated at all, it has been in the form either of a few final paragraphs in the discussion of the life cycle or of a simple ethnographic fact among other facts about a certain social system. What has been missing has been any attempt to put aging in a cross-cultural or comparative perspective, to give this vital subject the same treatment that has been accorded marriage, for example, or death or inheritance or sex roles.

Second, this book will bring a needed cross-cultural perspective to the study of social gerontology. The recent explosion of interest in this field has been largely confined to the study of aging in North America and Europe. But we anthropologists feel that such a culturally limited study, though interesting and productive in its own right, is dangerously narrow if it does not consider what aging is like in other societies. What aspects of aging, for example, are human universals and have to be planned for as inevitable, and what aspects are cultural particulars and can be avoided, modified, or strengthened under certain social conditions? By presenting both a biological account of the universals of human aging (Weiss), and specific ethnographic accounts of aging in a wide variety of societies, we believe we can help to put North American aging into perspective

Third, we hope this book will serve as an illustration of a particular anthropological approach to unity and diversity in human societies and cultures. Perhaps the main task of sociocultural anthropology is a twofold one: the explanation of cross-cultural universals, somehow rooted either in the biological nature of the human species or in universal imperatives of social organization, and the explanation of intercultural variations, rooted in a dialectical interaction between culture and the material conditions (partially created by culture) in which it exists. If unity and diversity can indeed be explained in this way, the cross-cultural study of aging can serve as a paradigm. By first setting out what seem to be the universals determined by the biology of the human species, and by then exploring the range of variation in cultural solutions, we ought to be able to formulate a set of principles that will allow us to explain why variations occur in a certain way. Nine ethnographic case studies are enough, we believe, to enable us to formulate some preliminary hypotheses about the nature and causes of variation in the social process of aging.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Contributors Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Foreword Carl Eisdorfer Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction: An Anthropological Perspective on Aging Pamela T. Amoss and Stevan Harrell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Aging Kenneth M. Weiss Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
"Nepotists" and "Altruists": The Behavior of Old Females Among Macaques and Langur Monkeys Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
"The Old People Give You Life": Aging Among !Kung Hunter-Gatherers Megan Biesele Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
Old Age Among the Chipewyan Henry S. Sharp Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
The Elderly Asmat of New Guinea Peter W. Vanarsdale Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
Old Age in Gwembe District, Zambia Elizabeth Colson and Thayer Scudder Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
Respected Elder or Old Person: Aging in a Micronesian Community James D. Nason Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
Growing in Respect: Aging Among the Kirghiz of Afghanistan M. Nazif Shahrani Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Growing Old in Rural Taiwan Stevan Harrell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Old Age in a South Indian Village Paul G. Hiebert Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Coast Salish Elders Pamela T. Amoss Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
References Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 296
Keywords: Anthropology

eBook

Published: March 1, 1981
ISBN: 9780804766180