Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Lawrence Cohen
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.635kg
ISBN:  

9780520224629

ISBN 10:   0520224620
Pages:   400
Publication Date:   11 January 2000
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

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

Reviews

In studying 'what is not there' in India-aging as a disease-Cohen provides a richly documented view of what is there, especially of how people talk about things like Westernization and nuclear families as 'bad things.' No Aging in India packs in many details but also offers valuable comparative generalizations (with caution) that defy pure Geertzian guidelines about the sanctity of the local. . . . Monitoring the impacts of globalization and localization of Western views of aging, including gerontology, is another key area of future research prompted by this important book. * Pacific Affairs * This is a powerful, provocative book, rich with meaning. Lawrence Cohen weaves together challenging, revealing theory with vivid ethnographic images-of white-clad stooped women mingling with hungry dogs on the narrow lanes of Varanasi (Benaras); of a 'hot-minded' mother-in-law yelling out her window for someone to come save her, thus inculpating a 'Bad Family' and uncaring daughter-in- law; of an eager anthropologist trying to find senile old people with whom to do research. By the end the reader gains a new awareness of an important dimension of social and political life in India, as well as of what medical anthropology, gerontology, and ethnographic writing can be. * Anthropological Quarterly *

No Aging in India deserves to be a classic in the anthropological literature on aging. --John Van Willigen, Medical Anthropology Quarterly

This is a powerful, provocative book, rich with meaning. Lawrence Cohen weaves together challenging, revealing theory with vivid ethnographic images-of white-clad stooped women mingling with hungry dogs on the narrow lanes of Varanasi (Benaras); of a 'hot-minded' mother-in-law yelling out her window for someone to come save her, thus inculpating a 'Bad Family' and uncaring daughter-in- law; of an eager anthropologist trying to find senile old people with whom to do research. By the end the reader gains a new awareness of an important dimension of social and political life in India, as well as of what medical anthropology, gerontology, and ethnographic writing can be. * Anthropological Quarterly * In studying 'what is not there' in India-aging as a disease-Cohen provides a richly documented view of what is there, especially of how people talk about things like Westernization and nuclear families as 'bad things.' No Aging in India packs in many details but also offers valuable comparative generalizations (with caution) that defy pure Geertzian guidelines about the sanctity of the local. . . . Monitoring the impacts of globalization and localization of Western views of aging, including gerontology, is another key area of future research prompted by this important book. * Pacific Affairs * No Aging in India challenge[s] the ways in which we think about aging and senility, kinship and its undoing, medicine and the nation, language and the possibilities of ethnographic writing, and what it means to do the anthropology of South Asia. . . . [It] has helped to forge new openings and connections . . . in broader fields like anthropology, science and technology studies, South Asian Studies and critical gerontology. * Somatosphere *

Author Information

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

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