UNFORGOTTEN: Love and the Culture of Dementia Care in India
Bianca Brijnath
Announcing Volume 2, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations series edited by Jay Sokolovsky in cooperation with AAGE. Bianca Brijnath’s first book, “Unforgotten: Love and Culture of Dementia Care in India” is due for release in July 2014. Here is what readers are saying:
“This is a superb study, one of the most exciting, original, perceptive and engrossing books I have read in India studies and aging studies in some time…One of the most attractive features of it is its eloquent, often poetic, writing style that draws the reader in from the first pages through to the end.” · Sarah Lamb, Brandeis University
“…a deeply humane account of the disparate experiences of middle class Indian families in Delhi–in their homes, public spaces and medical facilities–as they care for older family members with dementia. The gender, class and health inequities of daily life and the cultural ideal of seva (respect and service to family elders) resonate through these experiences of hope and despair, love and frustration, stigma and silence.” · Maria G. Cattell, The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
As life expectancy increases in India, the number of people living with dementia will also rise. Yet little is known about how people in India cope with dementia, how relationships and identities change through illness and loss. In addressing this question, this book offers a rich ethnographic account of how middle-class families in urban India care for their relatives with dementia. From the husband who wakes up at 3 am to feed his wife ice-cream to the daughters who gave up employment for seven years to care for their mother with dementia, this book illuminates the local idioms on dementia and aging, the personal experience of care-giving, the functioning of stigma in daily life, and the social and cultural barriers in accessing support.
Bianca Brijnath is a NHMRC Early Career Fellow in the Department of General Practice, Monash University, Australia. She is a researcher in medical anthropology, public health and primary health care. Her areas of interest include cross-cultural meanings of mental health and care and her field sites include India and Australia. This is her first book.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. Methods and Character Building
Chapter 2. The Diagnostic Process
Chapter 3. Therapeutics and Health Seeking
Chapter 4. The Economies of Care
Chapter 5. Alzheimer’s and the Indian Appetite
Chapter 6. Stigma and Loneliness in Care
Chapter 7. The Journey to Silence
Conclusion: ‘This is the Time for Romance’
Purchase this book here: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=BrijnathUnforgotten
The third volume, in the Berghahn series, Life Course, Culture & Aging: Global Transformations, edited by Jay Sokolovsky is now available.