Overview

The proliferation of old age homes and increasing numbers of elderly living alone are startling new phenomena in India. These trends are related to extensive overseas migration and the transnational dispersal of families. In this moving and insightful account, Sarah Lamb shows that older persons are innovative agents in the processes of social-cultural change. Lamb's study probes debates and cultural assumptions in both India and the United States regarding how best to age; the proper social-moral relationship among individuals, genders, families, the market, and the state; and ways of finding meaning in the human life course.

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9780253221001

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Reviews

A timely investigation of remarkable, extraordinarily rapid, and previously unimaginable changes taking place within India's urban middle-class families... Beautifully written and readable ... ethnographically rich and theoretically astute. Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University Sarah Lamb's compassionate voice and reflexive insights weave around the moving narratives of Bengali elders in this beautifully written, theoretically sophisticated ethnography. A classic in the anthropology of India, comparative modernities, and aging. Kirin Narayan, author of My Family and Other Saints

A timely investigation of remarkable, extraordinarily rapid, and previously unimaginable changes taking place within India's urban middle-class families... Beautifully written and readable ... ethnographically rich and theoretically astute. Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University Sarah Lamb's compassionate voice and reflexive insights weave around the moving narratives of Bengali elders in this beautifully written, theoretically sophisticated ethnography. A classic in the anthropology of India, comparative modernities, and aging. Kirin Narayan, author of My Family and Other Saints

Author Information

Sarah Lamb is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. She is author of White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender and Body in North India and co-editor of Everyday Life in South Asia (IUP, 2002).

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