By Miriam Verhage, Lucia Thielman, Lieke de Kock, Jolanda Lindenberg This blog post is based on a phone-based qualitative interview project in the Netherlands. During April 2020, we interviewed 59 seniors about their experiences during the COVID-19 crisis and their views on the portrayal of senior adults in the national media. The participants were between […]
Tag: intergenerational relations
Those Who Come Early
Generations in Japan are fragmented. Society lacks structures to create solidarities between them (which is a very Western, and thus foreign idea anyway). Is it naïve to think the brutal fact of a higher COVID-19 mortality rate for the aged might inspire sympathy rather than division? The criticism aimed at seniors queueing at drugstores has been just one of the everyday side-effects of COVID-19, one that naturalizes moral judgements against older bodies in public spaces.
The Value of Intergenerational Storytelling
“This is really starting to get interesting, because I have lots of stories to tell!” exclaimed Bernice (pseudonym), a 95-year-old participant in the newly-launched Upper Peninsula Digital History Initiative (UPDHI) in Hancock, a small town in northern Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. The tension in the air was palpable as the four older adults and four youth […]
The Importance of ‘Blood,’ Identity, and Intergenerational Relationships over the Life Course of Ugandan Children Orphaned by AIDS
“They are my daughter’s blood. I couldn’t watch my blood suffer,” an elderly grandmother in Uganda told me. She was referring to her daughter’s four orphaned children, explaining why she refused to allow the children to go live with their father’s clan – the clan that is traditionally responsible for the upbringing of orphaned […]
Time and bodies in grandparenthood
After more than a decade of following how the lives of grandparents and grandchildren – two different generations- in northwest Tanzania have unfolded, it is increasingly exciting to think with the concepts of time and the body. How does time play out in relations with grandchildren as they gradually grow up from toddlers to young […]
AAGE X ACYIG: Richard Zimmer on generational links in special needs families
When I was in San Diego last spring for the SPA/ACYIG Meeting (Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group), I attended a panel discussion on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (which only the USA and Somalia are yet to ratify). Many of us are involved in similar political advocacy for the […]