Anthropology & Aging Books for Review

Bauer-Maglin, Nan, ed. 2019.  Widows’ Words Women Write on the Experience of Grief, the First Year, the Long Haul, and Everything in Between. Rutgers University Press. Price: $28,5 (Paperback)

Becoming a widow is one of the most traumatic life events that a woman can experience. Yet, as this remarkable new collection reveals, each woman responds to that trauma differently. Here, forty-three widows tell their stories, in their own words.

Some were widowed young, while others were married for decades. Some cared for their late partners through long terminal illnesses, while others lost their partners suddenly. Some had male partners, while others had female partners. Yet each of these women faced the same basic dilemma: how to go on living when a part of you is gone.

Widows’ Words is arranged chronologically, starting with stories of women preparing for their partners’ deaths, followed by the experiences of recent widows still reeling from their fresh loss, and culminating in the accounts of women who lost their partners many years ago but still experience waves of grief. Their accounts deal honestly with feelings of pain, sorrow, and despair, and yet there are also powerful expressions of strength, hope, and even joy. Whether you are a widow yourself or have simply experienced loss, you will be sure to find something moving and profound in these diverse tales of mourning, remembrance, and resilience.

Bitenc, Rebecca A. 2019.   Reconsidering Dementia Narratives: Empathy, Identity and Care. New York: Routledge. pp 272.

Reconsidering Dementia Narratives explores the role of narrative in developing new ways of understanding, interacting with, and caring for people with dementia. It asks how the stories we tell about dementia – in fiction, life writing and film – both reflect and shape the way we think about this important condition.

Highlighting the need to attend to embodied and relational aspects of identity in dementia, the study further outlines ways in which narratives may contribute to dementia care, while disputing the idea that the modes of empathy fostered by narrative necessarily bring about more humane care practices. This cross-medial analysis represents an interdisciplinary approach to dementia narratives which range across auto/biography, graphic narrative, novel, film, documentary and collaborative storytelling practices. The book aims to clarify the limits and affordances of narrative, and narrative studies, in relation to an ethically driven medical humanities agenda through the use of case studies.

Answering the key question of whether dementia narratives align with or run counter to the dominant discourse of dementia as ‘loss of self’, this innovative book will be of interest to anyone interested in dementia studies, ageing studies, narrative studies in health care, and critical medical humanities.

Bures, Regina M. and Nancy R. Gee. 2021. Well-being over the Life Course: Incorporating Human-animal Interactions. Springer International Publishing. pp. XV, 109.

This book provides a multidisciplinary overview of the impact of human–animal interaction on well-being from childhood to later life. It presents a life course perspective to the study of human–animal interaction, addressing concepts of family and the role of pets therein, as well as the impact of companion animals on child development and successful aging. This book fills a gap in the existing literature by framing the study of human–animal interaction, including the role of animal-assisted interventions on well-being, in a broader social and behavioral context.

Carney, Gemma and Paul Nash. 2020. Critical Questions for Ageing Societies. Bristol: Policy Press. pp. 234. Price: $ 88,78 (Hardcover);  $ 27,7 (Paperback and eBook). (more information)

This myth-busting and question-focused textbook tackles the fascinating and important social and policy issues posed by the challenges and opportunities of ageing.

The unique pedagogical approach recognises the gap between the lives of students and older people, and equips students with the conceptual, analytical and critical tools to understand what it means to grow old and what it means to live in an ageing society.

Features include:

• Myth-busting boxes incorporated into each chapter that unpack the common assumptions and stereotypes about ageing and older people in a clear and striking way;
• A multidisciplinary and issue-focused approach, interspersed with lively examples and vignettes bringing the debates to life;
• Group and self-study activities;
• A comprehensive glossary of key terms.

Answering questions which have arisen over years of longitudinal and systematic research on the social implications of ageing, this lively and engaging textbook provides an essential foundation for students in gerontology, sociology, social policy and related fields.

Caldararo, Niccolo. 2021. The Future of Leisure and Retirement: Pension Schemes, Community Support, and Contemporary Consequences for the Next Generation. Washington DC: Academica Press. pp.260. Price: $99.95 (Hardcover).

In The Future of Leisure and Retirement, veteran anthropologist Niccolo Caldararo explores social support for the elderly in cross-cultural and historical contexts. Beginning with a comparison of various cultural traditions developed in complex societies from ancient times to modern, this vital new book argues that how a society values its aged citizens and views their contributions to society determines its willingness to provide for their support. Recently, an increasing number of U.S. companies have raided their pension funds to stay afloat or have closed them and transferred liability. Major changes to U.S. federal laws concerning pensions and the responsibility of corporations to fund them have been made under the Pension Protection Act of 2006. Worldwide, workers’ retirement payments are under assault, as are investments by pension funds due to laws governing priority of payment. The need for retirement support of some kind in the post-Covid-19 world will require new forms as well as the recovery of pre-Covid-19 savings and investments. Caldararo concludes that sweeping changes in the law are necessary to increase the stability of our modern retirement system.

Ceci, Christine and Mary Ellen Perkis. 2021. Care at Home for People Living with Dementia: Delaying Institutionalisation, Sustaining Families. Bristol: Policy Press. pp. 208. Price: $101,4 (Hardcover); $36,5 (eBook)

What ‘kind’ of community is demanded by a problem like dementia?

As aspects of care continue to transition from institutional to community and home settings, this book considers the implications for people living with dementia and their carers.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork and case studies from Canada, this book analyses the intersections of formal dementia strategies and the experiences of families and others on the frontlines of care.

Considering the strains placed on care systems by the COVID-19 pandemic, this book looks afresh at what makes home-based care possible or impossible and how these considerations can help establish a deeper understanding necessary for good policy and practice.

(see also: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2021/09/29/policy-briefing-planning-for-care/).

Christensen, Janelle.  2018. Eldercare, Health, and Ecosyndemics in a Perilous World. Rowman and Littlefield. Price: $75 (Hardcover); $71 (e-Book).

Humans are at a unique crossroads: never before have we had such a clear understanding of how our actions affect a changing climate, or how our settlement patterns along coastal environments put us at risk of rising sea levels. However, the science behind climate change (and solutions for it) are engulfed in political controversy. Dr. Christensen uses anthropological methods to illuminate the lived experience of families caring for elder relatives during climate related events: a unique conundrum facing increasing numbers of people living in coastal areas.

As populations in industrialized countries grow older, they become more vulnerable to climate extremes. People over 65 are more likely to die in climate related events, such as heatwaves, hurricanes, and blizzards. Dr. Christensen presents the scientific evidence for climate change, the archaeological record on how humans responded to climatic shifts in the past, and explains how the current challenges are different. Using the theoretical framework of Singer’s Syndemics, she explores how aging bodies are more vulnerable to increased environmental toxins, which is further exacerbated by climate fluctuations. A central question is: how do we value our environment, our elders, and make decisions about well-being throughout the life course?

Crăciun, Irina Catrinel. 2019. Positive Aging and Precarity Theory, Policy, and Social Reality within a Comparative German Context. Springer Publishing. Price: $106,65 (Hardcover); $85 (e-Book).

This book explores positive aging through the lens of precarity, aiming to ground positive aging theories in current social contexts. In recent years, research on aging has been branded by growing disagreements between supporters of the successful aging model and critical gerontologists who highlight the widening inequalities, disadvantages and precarity that characterize old age. This book comes to fill a gap in knowledge by offering an alternative view on positive aging, informed by precarity and its impact on projections concerning aging.

The first part of the book places aging in broader theoretical and empirical context, exploring the complex links between views on aging, successful aging theories, policy and social reality. The second part uses results from a qualitative research conducted in Germany to illustrate the dissonance between successful aging ideals and both negative and positive views on aging as well as aging preparation strategies inspired by precarity. Findings from this section provide a solid starting point for comparisons with countries that are both similar and different from Germany in terms of welfare regimes and aging policies. The final part of the book discusses the psychological implications of these findings within and beyond the German case study and outlines potential solutions for practice.

This book provides health psychologists, gerontologists, sociologists, social workers, health professionals as well as students and aging individuals themselves with better understanding of the meaning of aging in precarious times and builds confidence about aging well despite precarity.

Danely, Jason. 2022. Fragile Resonance: Caring for Older Family Members in Japan and England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 270. Price: $ 125 (Hardcover); $ 29,95 (Paperback); $ 19,99. (more information)

Fragile Resonance describes the paths carers take as they make meaning of their experiences and find a sense of moral purpose to sustain them and guide their decisions. When a parent or partner becomes frail or disabled, often a family member assumes responsibility for their care. But family care is a physically and emotionally exhausting undertaking. Carers experience moments of profound connection as well as pain and grief. Carers ask themselves questions about the meaning of family, their entitlement to support, and their capacity to understand and sympathize with another person’s pain.

Based on his research gathering stories of family carers in Japan and England, Jason Danely traces how care transforms individual sensibilities and the roles of cultural narratives and imagination in shaping these transformations, which persist even after the care recipient has died. Throughout Fragile Resonance, Danely examines the implications of unpaid carer’s experiences for challenging and enhancing social policies and institutions, highlighting innovative alternatives grounded in the practical ethics of care.

DeJong Newendorp, Nicole. 2020. Chinese Senior Migrants and the Globalization of Retirement. Stanford University Press. pp 232. Price: $90 (Hardcover); $28 (Paperback).

The 21st century has seen growing numbers of seniors turning to migration in response to newfound challenges to traditional forms of retirement and old-age support, such as increased longevity, demographically aging populations, and global neoliberal trends reducing state welfare. Chinese-born migrants to the U.S. serve as an exemplary case of this trend, with 30 percent of all migrants since 1990 being at least 60 years old. This book tells their story, arguing that they demonstrate the significance of age as a mediating factor that is fundamentally important for considering how migration is experienced. The subjects of this study are situated at the crossroads of Chinese immigrant and Chinese-American experiences, embodying many of the ambiguities and paradoxes that complicate common understandings of each group. These are older individuals who have waited their whole lives to migrate to the U.S. to rejoin family but often experience unanticipated family conflict when they arrive. They are retirees living at the social and economic margins of American society who nonetheless find significant opportunities to achieve meaningful retired lifestyles. They are members of a diaspora spanning vast regional and ideological differences, yet their wellbeing hinges on everyday interactions with others in this diverse community. Their stories highlight the many possibilities for mutual engagement that connect Chinese and American ways of being and belonging in the world.

Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna and Irena Barbara Kalla, eds. 2021. Children’s Literature and Intergenerational Relationships: Encounters of the Playful Kind. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. xvii, 252. Price : $122,85 (Hardcover) ; $99 (eBook)

Children’s Literature and Intergenerational Relationships: Encounters of the Playful Kind explores ways in which children’s literature becomes the object and catalyst of play that brings younger and older generations closer to one another. Providing examples from diverse cultural and historical contexts, this collection argues that children’s texts promote intergenerational play through the use of literary devices and graphic formats and that they may prompt joint play practices in the real world. The book offers a distinctive contribution to children’s literature scholarship by shifting critical attention away from the difference and conflict between children and adults to the exploration of inter-age interdependencies as equally crucial aspects of human life, presenting a new perspective for all who research and work with children’s culture in times of global aging.

Gramshammer-Hhol, Dagmar and Oana Ursulesku (eds). 2020. Foreign Countries of Old Age: East and Southeast European Perspectives on Aging. Transcript Verlag.

pp 400.

The exploration of what May Sarton calls the “foreign country of old age” usually does not go far beyond the familiar: the focus of aging studies has thus far clearly rested upon North America and Western Europe. This multidisciplinary essay collection critically examines conditions and representations of old age and aging in Eastern and Southeastern Europe from various perspectives of the humanities and social sciences. By shedding light on these culturally specific contexts, the contributions widen our understanding of the aging process in all its diversity and demonstrate that a shift in perspectives might in fact challenge a number of taken-for-granted positions and presumptions of aging studies.

Grenier, Amanda, Chris Phillipson and Richard A. Settersten Jr., eds. 2020. Precarity and Ageing Understanding Insecurity and Risk in Later Life (Ageing in a Global Context). Policy Press. Price: $100 (Hardcover); $33 (e-Book).

What risks and insecurities do older people face in a time of both increased longevity and widening inequality?

This edited collection develops an exciting new approach to understanding the changing cultural, economic and social circumstances facing different groups of older people. Exploring a range of topics, the chapters provide a critical review of the concept of precarity, highlighting the experiences of ageing that occur within the context of societal changes tied to declining social protection. Drawing together insights from leading voices across a range of disciplines, the book underscores the pressing need to address inequality across the life course and into later life.

Grenier, Amanda. 2022. Late-Life Homelessness: Experiences of Disadvantage and Unequal Aging. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. pp. 352. Price: $102 (Hardcover); $31,32 (Paperback).

A critical analysis of aging on the streets, in shelters, and in long-term care in Canada.

Around the world and across a range of contexts, homelessness among older people is on the rise. In spite of growing media attention and new academic research on the issue, older people often remain unrecognized as a subpopulation in public policy, programs, and homeless strategies. As such, they occupy a paradoxical position of being hypervisible while remaining overlooked.

Late-Life Homelessness is the first Canadian book to address this often neglected issue. Basing her analysis on a four-year ethnographic study of late-life homelessness in Montreal, Canada, Amanda Grenier uses a critical gerontological perspective to explore life at the intersection of aging and homelessness. She draws attention to disadvantage over time and how the condition of being unhoused disrupts a person’s ability to age in place, resulting in experiences of unequal aging. Weaving together findings from policy documents, stakeholder insights, and observations and interviews with older people, this book demonstrates how structures, organizational practices, and relationships related to homelessness and aging come to shape late life. Situated in the context of an aging population, rising inequality, and declining social commitments, Late-Life Homelessness stresses the moral imperative of responding justly to the needs of older people as a means of mitigating the unequal aging of unhoused elders.

Hartung, Heike, Rüdiger Kunow, and Matthew Sweney, eds. 2022. Ageing Masculinities, Alzheimer’s and Dementia Narratives. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 224. Price: $115 (Hardcover); Open Access (eBook).

Bringing together insights from masculinity studies and age studies, this volume focuses on the gendered and relational perspectives in cultural representations of Alzheimer’s disease.

Combining a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the authors analyse the interrelations between masculinities and representations of dementia from a wide range of cultural contexts to explore it as an intensely gendered and cultural disease.

They examine memoir, film, poetry and prose fiction, and look at work from a wide range of authors, including Anne Carson, Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, to provide new insights into established narratives of dementia and explore the complex ways that the disease resists representation and narration and questions traditional views of selfhood and human development.

Horn, Vincent, Cornelia Schweppe, Anita Böcker, and María Bruquetas-Callejo, eds. 2021. The Global Old Age Care Industry: Tapping Into Migrants for Tackling the Old Age Crisis. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. xvii, 325. Price: $ 123,85 (Hardcover, Paperback); Open Access (PDF). (more information)  

• Examines the mechanisms, policies, strategies and actors that are involved in mobilizing, recruiting and placing migrant care workers from poorer countries in private households and long-term care services in richer countries
• Addresses a gap in the literature by investigating the complex entanglement and involvement of a growing number of actors in the recruitment and incorporation of migrants in national old age care systems, and how this shapes the delivery of old age care
• Provides a cutting-edge interdisciplinary and global analysis of the processes and mechanisms underlying the increasing migration of old age care workers in different countries and regions in the world

Howell, Britteny and Ryan Harrod, eds. 2022. Anthropological Perspectives on Aging. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. pp. 444. Price: $ 90 (Hardcover); $ 35 (Paperback). (more information)

Taking a holistic approach to the study of aging, this volume uses biological, archaeological, medical, and cultural perspectives to explore how older adults have functioned in societies around the globe and throughout human history. As the world’s population over 65 years of age continues to increase, this wide-ranging approach fills a growing need for both academics and service professionals in gerontology, geriatrics, and related fields.

Case studies from the United States, Tibet, Turkey, China, Nigeria, and Mexico provide examples of the ways age-related changes are influenced by environmental, genetic, sociocultural, and political-economic variables. Taken together, they help explain how the experience of aging varies across time and space. These contributions from noted anthropological scholars examine evolutionary and biological understandings of human aging, the roles of elders in various societies, issues of gender and ageism, and the role of chronic illness and “successful aging” among older adults.

This volume highlights how an anthropology of aging can illustrate how older adults adapt to shifting life circumstances and environments, including changes to the ways in which individuals and families care for them. The research in Anthropological Perspectives on Aging can also help researchers, students, and practitioners reach across disciplines to address age discrimination and help improve health outcomes throughout the life course.

Kingfisher, Catherine. 2021. Collaborative Happiness: Building the Good Life in Urban Cohousing Communities. New York/Oxford: Berghahn. pp. 254. Price: $ 135 (Hardcover); $ 34,95 (eBook). (more information)

Understudied relative to other forms of intentional community, and under-recognized in policy-making circles, urban cohousing communities situate wellbeing as simultaneously social and subjective, while catering for groups of people so diverse in age. Collaborative Happiness looks at two such urban cohousing communities: Kankanmori, in Tokyo; and Quayside Village, in Vancouver. In expanding beyond mainstream approaches to happiness focused exclusively on the individual, Quayside Village and Kankanmori provide an alternative model for how to understand and practice the good life in an increasingly urbanized world marked by crisis of both social and environmental sustainability.

Kröger, Teppo. 2022. Care Poverty: When Older People’s Needs Remain Unmet. Palgrave Macmillan Cham. pp. xvii, 250. Price: $ 51,59 (Hardcover); $ 41,27 (Paperback); Open Access (eBook and PDF). (more information)

 This open access book turns the research attention of social policy scholars and long-term care researchers from comparative descriptions of care systems, focusing mostly on expenditures and volumes of long-term care services, to outcomes, and in particular to the question whether older people really receive the support that they need. Without knowledge about which needs and which social groups are currently inadequately covered, it is impossible to guide policy development.

The book puts forward a novel theoretical framework to guide future research work and public discussion on the issue of unmet long-term care needs, by broadening the current discussion so that inadequate care is seen in its societal and policy contexts, taking structural issues and policy designs into account. Kröger outlines three different domains of care poverty (personal care poverty, practical care poverty and socio-emotional care poverty) and differentiates between main methods how unmet needs are measured. This book summarises the existing knowledge on the prevalence, factors and consequences of unmet care needs and interprets these comparatively in the light of social inequalities and care policy models of different welfare states. It will be invaluable to students and scholars of social policy, social work, social gerontology, sociology and political science, and to all disciplines across the field of social sciences that study welfare state policies and care for older people.

Krüger-Fürhoff, Irmela Marei, Nina Schmidt and Sue Vice, eds. 2022. The Politics of Dementia: Forgetting and Remembering the Violent Past in Literature, Film and Graphic Narratives. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 228. Price: $ 103 (Hardcover); Open Access (eBook).

 Memory loss is not always viewed purely as a contingent neurobiological process present in an ageing population; rather, it is frequently related to larger societal issues and political debates. This edited volume examines how different media and genres – novels, auto/biographical writings, documentary as well as fictional films and graphic memoirs – represent dementia for the sake of critical explorations of memory, trauma and contested truths. In ten analytical chapters and one piece of graphic art, the contributors examine the ways in which what might seem to be the individual, ahistorical diseases of dementia are used in contemporary cultural texts to represent and respond to violent historical and political events – ranging from the Holocaust to postcolonial conditions – all of which can prove difficult to remember. Combining approaches from literary studies with insights from memory studies, trauma studies, anthropology, the critical medical humanities and media, film and comics studies, this volume explores the politics of dementia and incites new debates on cultures of remembrance, while remaining attentive to the lived reality of dementia.

Lain, David, Sarah Vickerstaff, and Mariska van der Horst, eds. 2022. Older Workers in Transition: European Experiences in a Neoliberal Era. Bristol: Bristol University Press. pp. 214. Price: $ 87,65 (Hardcover); $ 30,7 (eBook). (more information) 

 More people are extending their working lives through necessity or choice in the context of increasingly precarious labour markets and neoliberalism. This book goes beyond the aggregated statistics to explore the lived experiences of older people attempting to make job transitions.

Drawing on the voices of older workers in a diverse range of European countries, leading scholars explore job redeployment and job mobility, temporary employment, unemployment, employment beyond pension age and transitions into retirement.

This book makes a major contribution and will be essential reading within a range of disciplines, including social gerontology, management, sociology and social policy.

Lamb, Sarah. 2022. Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion and Possibility. Oakland: University of California Press. pp. 236. Price: $ 34,95 (Paperback); Open Access (eBook). (more information)

Today, the majority of the world’s population lives in a country with falling marriage rates, a phenomenon with profound impacts on women, gender, and sexuality. In this exceptionally crafted ethnography, Sarah Lamb probes the gendered trend of single women living in India, examining what makes living outside marriage for women increasingly possible and yet incredibly challenging. Featuring the stories of never-married women as young as 35 and as old as 92, the book offers a remarkable portrait of a way of life experienced by women across class and caste divides, from urban professionals and rural day laborers, to those who identify as heterosexual and lesbian, to others who evaded marriage both by choice and by circumstance. For women in India, complex social-cultural and political-economic contexts are foundational to their lives and decisions, and evading marriage is often an unintended consequence of other pressing life priorities. Arguing that never-married women are able to illuminate their society’s broader social-cultural values, Lamb offers a new and startling look at prevailing systems of gender, sexuality, kinship, freedom, and social belonging in India today.

Łuszczyńska, Maria. 2021. Ageing as a Social Challenge: Individual, Family and Social Aspects in Poland. Routledge publishing. pp. 376. Price: $ 162,5 (Hardcover); $ 50 (eBook).

With a focus on the case of Poland, where an ageing population poses a crucial challenge for the state’s social, family, and gerontological policy, this book explores ageing as a personal and social phenomenon, considering the ways in which the experience of ageing is shaped by younger generations’ attitudes, government support policies, local initiatives undertaken help older people stay active, and the ways in which the elderly themselves understand their own mortality. Employing demographic, philosophical, legal, psychological, gerontological perspectives, it emphasises activities that can support older adults locally or nationwide and proposes the development of a social policy and social attitudes that can facilitate changes in the social perception of ageing, together with a redistribution of resources for older adults. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in ageing and the lifecourse, as well as those who wish to support older adults with concrete solutions and familiarize themselves with the ageing process from an individual and social perspective.

Łuszczyńska, Maria and Marvin Formosa, eds. 2021. Ageing and COVID-19: Making Sense of a Disrupted World. Routledge publishing. pp. 348. Price: $ 162,5 (Hardcover); Open Access (eBook).

This volume presents a range of research approaches to the exploration of ageing during a pandemic situation. One of the first collections of its kind, it offers an array of studies employing research methodologies that lend themselves to replication in similar contexts by those seeking to understand the effects of epidemics on older people. Thematically organised, it shows how to reconcile qualitative and quantitative approaches, thus rendering them complementary, bringing together studies from around the world to offer an international perspective on ageing as it relates to an unprecedented epidemiological phenomenon. As such, it will appeal to researchers in the field of gerontology, as well as sociologists of medicine and clinicians seeking to understand the disruptive effects of the recent coronavirus outbreak on later life.

Marston, Hanna, Linda Shore, Laura Stoops, and Robbie S. Turner. 2022. Transgenerational Technology and Interactions for the 21st Century: Perspectives and Narratives. Emerald Publishing. pp. 360. Price: $ 105 (Hardcover). (more information).

Transgenerational Technology and Interactions for the 21^st Century explores how we as humans navigate the 21^st Century, interacting with technologies, including those that are intended to support and enhance our experiences across the lifespan. This manifesto, composed with humanity at the front and centre, pinpoints succinctly the critical considerations of people, technology and inequalities intersecting across our 21^st century ecosystems.

With a special focus on bridging interdisciplinary research, creative and co-production approaches, the authors explore and present cutting edge discourse, building on previous research to form contemporary and inform future awareness and strategies to societal experiences. The authors argue that it is time to re-evaluate how we move forward in a multi-faceted society, with the ever growing reliance of technology but yet many voices are not heard, left behind or not even considered.

This creative and collaborative response is suited to researchers, academics, designers, industry and stakeholder professionals who have an interest the fields of technology, design, sociology and innovation.

Peace, Sheila. The Environments of Ageing – Space, Place, Materiality. London: Policy Press. Forthcoming (September 2021). pp. 272. Price: $106 (Hardcover); $38.10 (eBook).

Providing the first UK assessment of environmental gerontology, this book enriches current understanding of the spatiality of ageing.

Sheila Peace considers how places and spaces contextualise personal experience in varied environments, from urban and rural to general and specialised housing. Situating extensive research within multidisciplinary thinking, and incorporating policy and practice, this book assesses how personal health and well-being effect different experiences of environment. It also considers the value of intergenerational and age-related living, the meaning of home, and global to local concerns for population ageing in light of COVID-19.

Drawing on international comparisons, this book offers a valuable resource for new research and important lessons for the future.

Rinker, Courtney Hughes. Actively Dying: The Creation of Muslim Identities through End-of-Life Care in the United States. 2021. pp. 194. Price: $170 (Hardcover); $36.65 (eBook).

This book explores the experiences of Muslims in the United States as they interact with the health care system during serious illness and end-of-life care.

It shifts “actively dying” from a medical phrase used to describe patients who are expected to pass away soon or who exhibit signs of impending death, to a theoretical framework to analyze how end-of-life care, particularly within a hospital, shapes the ways that patients, families, and providers understand Islam and think of themselves as Muslim. Using the dying body as the main object of analysis, the volume shows that religious identities of Muslim patients, loved ones, and caregivers are not only created when living, but also through the physical process of dying and through death. Based on ethnographic and qualitative research carried out mainly in the Washington, D.C. region, this volume will be of interest to scholars in anthropology, sociology, public health, gerontology, and religious studies.

Sako, Katsura and Sarah Falcus, eds. 2021. Contemporary Narratives of Ageing, Illness, Care. New York: Routledge Publishing. pp. 216. Price: $ 162,5 (Hardcover); Open Access (eBook).

This collection of essays explores cultural narratives of care in the contexts of ageing and illness. It includes both text-based and practice-based contributions by leading and emerging scholars in humanistic studies of ageing. The authors consider care not only in film (feature and documentary) and literature (novel, short story, children’s picturebook) but also in the fields of theatre performance, photography and music.

The collection has a broad geographical scope, with case studies and primary texts from Europe and North America but also from Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Argentina and Mexico. The volume asks what care, autonomy and dependence may mean and how these may be inflected by social and cultural specificities. Ultimately, it invites us to reflect on our relations to others as we face the global and local challenges of care in ageing societies.

Salvador, Vicent and Agnese Sampietro, eds. 2020. Understanding the Discourse of Aging: A Multifaceted Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 356.

There are a number of books and articles covering particular facets of the topic of aging, such as the image of the elderly in the media, cinema, TV series and commercials, and in literature, which of course provide useful background material and references. However, these studies on aging discourse predominantly focus on a single discipline. This book adds a fresh perspective, by addressing the communicative practices surrounding age, aging and the elderly from a multidisciplinary perspective.

The volume addresses several issues related to the discourse on aging, from the problems related to definitions of age to the image of the elderly in literature, cinema, and mass media, and gendered issues surrounding the aging process.

Sampaio, Dora. 2022. Migration, Diversity and Inequality in Later Life: Ageing at a Crossroads. Palgrave Macmillan Cham. $ 113,5 (Hardcover); Open Access (PDF). (more information)

 This book is the first comprehensive ethnographic study of the diversity of living and ageing experiences of three groups of older migrants – return, lifestyle and ageing-in-place labour migrants – from a comparative perspective. It explores the motivations, ageing experiences and aspirations of transnational ageing migrants in the context of the Portuguese islands of the Azores and situates the research within debates of the ageing-migration nexus. The book’s interdisciplinary approach to transnational embodied and emplaced experiences of ageing facilitates a dialogue between various fields concerned with ageing and mobilities, including geography, anthropology, sociology, social gerontology, social work, and studies of health and wellbeing.

Schubert, Violeta. 2020. Modernity and the Unmaking of Men. New York/Oxford: Berghahn. Price: $120 (Hardcover).

Responding to the renewed emphasis on the significance of village studies, this book focuses on aging bachelorhood as a site of intolerable angst when faced with rural depopulation and social precarity. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in contemporary Macedonian society, the book explores the intersections between modernity, kinship and gender. It argues that as a critical consequence of demographic rupture, changing values and societal shifts, aging bachelorhood illuminates and challenges conceptualizations of performativity and social presence.

Simmonds, Bethany. Ageing and the Crisis in Health and Social Care Global and National Perspectives. London: Policy Press. Forthcoming (November 2021). pp. 152. Price: $106.00 (Hardcover); $38.2 (eBook).

Neoliberal political discourses have normalised the belief in northern European countries that individuals are responsible for their health and wellbeing, regardless of social class, gender or ethnic background.

Drawing on examples from Germany, Sweden and the UK, Simmonds critically examines how the neoliberalisation and marketisation of health and social care have created an adverse environment for older people, who lack social and cultural capital to access the care they need. This crucial analysis scrutinizes provision for ageing populations on an individual, national and global level.

Challenging current political and social policy approaches, this rigorous text discusses innovative solutions to contemporary challenges in a complex care system.

Torres, Sandra. 2019. Ethnicity and Old Age: Expanding Our Imagination. London: Policy Press. 2019. pp. 220. Price: $99.00 (Hardcover); $35.4 (Paperback and eBook).

Part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, this book proposes a new research agenda for scholarship that focuses on ethnicity, race and old age. It argues that in a time of increased international migration, population ageing and ethno-cultural diversity, scholarly imagination must be expanded as current research frameworks are becoming obsolete.

By bringing attention to the way that ethnicity and race have been addressed in research on ageing and old age, with a focus on health inequalities, health and social care, intergenerational relationships and caregiving, the book proposes how research can be developed in an ethnicity astute and diversity informed manner.

Ward, Richard, Andrew Clark, and Lynn Phillipsson. 2021. Dementia and Place: Practices, Experiences and Connections. Bristol: Policy Press. pp. 238. Price: $ 101,7 (hardcover); $33,89 (paperback, eBook).

Giving voice to the lived experiences of people with dementia across the globe, including Australia, Canada, Sweden and the UK, this critical and evidence-based collection engages with the realities of life for people living with dementia at home and within their neighbourhoods.

This insightful text addresses the fundamental social aspects of environment, including place attachment, belonging and connectivity. The chapters reveal the potential and expose the challenges for practitioners and researchers as dementia care shifts to a neighbourhood setting.

The unique ‘neighbourhood-centred’ perspective provides an innovative guide for policy and practice and calls for a new place-based culture of care and support in the neighbourhood.

Way, Laura. 2020. Punk, Gender and Aging. Emerald Publishing Ltd. Price: $89 (Hardcover).

Punk has traditionally been theorised within cultural studies and sociology as a male-dominated subculture within which women are marginalized. In line with feminist research values and epistemologies, Punk, Gender and Ageing gives voice to a previously marginalised sample: ageing punk women.

This is the first book to focus solely on the experiences of older punk women, going beyond recent scholarship on post-youth subcultural involvement which has demonstrated a limited exploration of the interplay between age, gender and subculture. Through areas such as music and dress, the author considers how ageing punk women continue to retain punk as significant in their lives.

Making a new and exciting contribution to a still developing field, this book, combining ageing, music subcultures and gender, will appeal to both students and scholars interested in subcultures as well as those looking at the sociology of gender and ageing.

Wender, Chaim J. and Patricia El. Morrison (eds). 2019. The hospice team: Who we are and how we care. Baltimore: Health Professions Press.

pp 208

This singular work offers a truly interdisciplinary team perspective on caring, presented by 21 veterans of hospice service representing the array of disciplines in effective teams—physicians, nurses, certified nurse assistants, social workers, chaplains, music therapists, bereavement counselors, a volunteer coordinator, and a volunteer of more than 26 years. Contributors share professional and personal experiences that encompass the medical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, interpersonal, social, cultural, and economic dimensions of dying and bereavement. These are brought together through a person-centered approach that champions knowing each person being cared for to create the necessary opportunity for communication and trust that are the hallmarks of high-quality hospice care.

Zhang, Angela Rong Yang. 2023. At Home in a Nursing Home: An Ethnography of Movement and Care in Australia. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books. pp. 218. Price: $ 135. (more information)

Focusing on contemporary ideas about how aged care is provided, this book poses the question: How can people who are aged and frail live out the final phase of their lives with dignity? In seeking answers, the author examines what it means to be ‘at home’ in residential care in a novel and compassionate way. In an ethnographic study of how elderly residents can be given the right care, this book provides a new route into the bodily realities of ageing. It is a vital contribution to the search for alternative approaches to aged care provision.

Checkoway, Laura. Edith and Eddie. 2017. Kartemquin Films. 29 min.

Edith and Eddie, ages 96 and 95, are America’s oldest interracial newlyweds. Their unusual and idyllic love story is disrupted by a family feud that threatens to tear the couple apart.

Takesue, Kimi. 2016. 95 and 6 to Go. New Day Films. 85min.

Filmmaker Kimi Takesue finds an unlikely collaborator while visiting her grandfather Tom in Hawai’i. A recent widower in his 90s, Tom seems content to go about his daily routines until he shows surprising interest in his granddaughter’s stalled romantic screenplay. In alternately funny and poignant discussions, Kimi’s fictional love story – and Tom’s creative revisions – serve as a vehicle for his past memories of love and loss to surface.

Shot over six years, this intimate meditation on family and absence expands the vernacular of the “home movie” to consider how history is accumulated in the everyday and how sparks of humor and creativity can animate an ordinary life.

Sojob, María. Tote_Abuelo. Terra Nostra Films/ Foprocine Imcine. 2019.

In her deeply personal debut documentary feature, Tzotzil filmmaker María Sojob documents the unexpected encounter between an old man, who is going blind, and his granddaughter, who has a limited memory of her childhood. As the grandfather weaves a traditional hat, the threads of family history are untangled. Between the silences, it becomes possible to understand the meaning of love in Tzotzil. A deceptively simple film, Tote/Abuelo/Grandfather is a complex portrait that contrasts the point of view of a younger generation with a traditional world that was largely marginalized. (source: https://arts.columbia.edu/events/toteabuelograndfather-spring-2021).

Magnússon, Jón Bjarki. Half Elf. SKAK biofilm. 2020. (https://skakbiofilm.com/).

Hulda and Trausti have shared a roof on Icelandic shores for over seventy years. Her love of books is matched by his love of stones. When he bursts out singing, she begs him to stop screaming, when he tells her he wants to change his name to “Elf” she warns his family will abandon him. Now, as his one hundredth birthday nears and Trausti senses the hand of death upon him he is on a quest to find the coffin that can carry this elf back to the mysteries beyond…. Meanwhile, Hulda retreats into a world of poetry with the help of an electric magnifying glass. Half Elf is a modern Icelandic fairy-tale, where life is celebrated – despite everything, despite ourselves and despite the reality that awaits all of us in the end.

Rappoport, Dana. Death of the One Who Knows [documentary film]. Le Miroir. 2020.

In the Toraja highlands of Sulawesi (Indonesia), Lumbaa is one of the last masters of ritual speech. After his forced conversion to Pentecostalism, he is compelled to stop all his ritual activity and oratory. Concerned by the disappearance of “those who know”, a young Catholic priest named Yans Sulo sets out in search of the society’s ancient oral genres, seeking to invent new forms that would keep them alive. The two men meet, but it is too late. By recounting the life and death of Lumbaa, the film shows how the intrusion of a world religion disrupts a Southeast Asian society.

This Is My Face (Esta Es Mi Cara): What Lies Inside a Journey with HIV.  Cerebro Films. 57 minutesPino, Angélica Cabezas. 2018. This Is My Face (Esta Es Mi Cara): What Lies Inside a Journey with HIV.  Cerebro Films. 57 minutes. (https://raifilm.org.uk/films/this-is-my-face/).

In Chile, people living with HIV fear stigma, and often conceal their condition and remain silent about what they are going through. ‘This is My Face (Esta es Mi Cara)’ explores what happens when men living with the virus open up about the illness that changed their life trajectories. It follows a creative process whereby they produce photographic portraits that represent their memories and feelings, challenging years of silence, shame, and misrepresentation. ‘This is My Face’ reveals a sense-making process across