Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sarah Lamb
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.499kg
ISBN:  

9780520220010

ISBN 10:   0520220013
Pages:   323
Publication Date:   22 June 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 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

Reviews

This richly detailed ethnography describes ideas about aging, gender, and body in a Bengali village in North India. - Choice

Author Information

Sarah Lamb is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University.

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