An Anthropology of Aging
Despite the early seminal book by Leo Simmons (1945), and articles by such luminaries as Gregory Bateson (1950), and Margaret Mead (1967), a concern for a worldwide, cross-cultural analysis of aging has developed late in anthropology. It was anthropologists such as Otto von Mering, Jules Henry, Margaret Clark, and Barbara Anderson who first turned the ethnographic approach into a valuable tool for understanding the relationship of aging, local culture, and well-being. In the late 1950s von Mering conducted fieldwork in the geriatric wards of psychiatric hospitals, illustrating how the cultural devaluing of old age led to a withdrawal of psychosocial care for older patients (von Mering, 1957). Jules Henry followed this (1963)with a disturbing ethnographic account of life in three American nursing homes. However, it was only with Margaret Clark’s, “The Anthropology of Aging, A New Area for Studies of Culture and Personality (1967)” that a clear direction was...
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Sokolovsky, J. (2004). Aging. In: Ember, C.R., Ember, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29905-X_25
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