On Wednesday morning in February 2013, I rang the doorbell of Leena, a 77 years old woman who lived in the city center of Oulu in northern Finland. She had agreed to take me for a walk from her home to the health center. While we were in a lift, Leena expressed her concerns about […]
Month: April 2016
Futures Past: Absent Kinships and the Japanese Child Welfare System
Assigned to write about “futures” in the context of childhood, I find myself dwelling on the past. Although approaches to childhood often must grapple with how “the child” is seen to signify the future (of a family, of a town, of a nation, of humanity), within child welfare systems, which are the context of my […]
Who Wouldn’t Want to Retire in Vancouver?: #SfAA2016 Conference Report
Vancouver is a beautiful city, often topping the list of best cities in the world to live and retire in. It is not surprising that this year’s SfAA meeting was the most well-attended ever. Quite a few of us interested in the anthropology of aging and life course issues were there. While gazing at the […]
“Time is no longer a river”: Reflections on life, death, and youth in the digital age
This post is part of the Life Course Collaborative Research Network blog exchange, also available on the website of ACYIG. To see all of the posts in the series, click here. In a recent editorial about how our “overdocumented lives” are making it more difficult to let go of the past, Susanna Schrobsdorff writes: Most […]
Growing old and growing up: Teaching and learning about death
This post is part of the Life Course Collaborative Research Network blog exchange, also available on the website of ACYIG. To see all of the posts in the series, click here. In 2004, as part of my research regarding the beliefs in ‘strigoi’ (a term referring to dead people who come back to harm and […]
CFP: Morality and Aging (special issue of Anthropology & Aging)
We are seeking additional contributors for a special issue we plan to propose. Responding to recent trends in ‘moral anthropology’, the issue will be specifically concerned with moralities in and through the latter stages of the life course. How, we ask, might moralities intersect with ageing?Just as the life course is bodily lived and socially […]