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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.
Price: $31.95
Pages: 400
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
11 January 2000
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520224629
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
"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."
Lawrence Cohen is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Critical Studies of Medicine, Science, and the Body at the University of California, Berkeley.
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
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