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Lawrence Cohen
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No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, The Bad Family, and Other Modern Things 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Lawrence Cohen (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 8 ratings
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From the opening sequence, in which mid-nineteenth-century Indian fishermen hear the possibility of redemption in an old woman's madness, No Aging in India captures the reader with its interplay of story and analysis. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic work, Lawrence Cohen links a detailed investigation of mind and body in old age in four neighborhoods of the Indian city of Varanasi (Banaras) with events and processes around India and around the world. This compelling exploration of senility—encompassing not only the aging body but also larger cultural anxieties—combines insights from medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies. Bridging literary genres as well as geographic spaces, Cohen responds to what he sees as the impoverishment of both North American and Indian gerontologies—the one mired in ambivalence toward demented old bodies, the other insistent on a dubious morality tale of modern families breaking up and abandoning their elderly. He shifts our attention irresistibly toward how old age comes to matter in the constitution of societies and their narratives of identity and history.
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  1. ISBN-13
    978-0520224629
  2. Edition
    1st
  3. Sticky notes
    Not Enabled
  4. Publisher
    University of California Press
  5. Publication date
    July 30, 1998
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    4778 KB
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"No Aging in India challenge[s] the ways in which we think about aging and senility, kinship and its undoing, medicine and the nation, language and the possibilities of ethnographic writing, and what it means to do the anthropology of South Asia. . . . [It] has helped to forge new openings and connections . . . in broader fields like anthropology, science and technology studies, South Asian Studies and critical gerontology."  ― Somatosphere

"This is a powerful, provocative book, rich with meaning. Lawrence Cohen weaves together challenging, revealing theory with vivid ethnographic images—of white-clad stooped women mingling with hungry dogs on the narrow lanes of Varanasi (Benaras); of a 'hot-minded' mother-in-law yelling out her window for someone to come save her, thus inculpating a 'Bad Family' and uncaring daughter-in- law; of an eager anthropologist trying to find senile old people with whom to do research. By the end the reader gains a new awareness of an important dimension of social and political life in India, as well as of what medical anthropology, gerontology, and ethnographic writing can be." ― Anthropological Quarterly

"In studying 'what is not there' in India—aging as a disease—Cohen provides a richly documented view of what is there, especially of how people talk about things like Westernization and nuclear families as 'bad things.' No Aging in India packs in many details but also offers valuable comparative generalizations (with caution) that defy pure Geertzian guidelines about the sanctity of the local. . . . Monitoring the impacts of globalization and localization of Western views of aging, including gerontology, is another key area of future research prompted by this important book." ― Pacific Affairs

From the Inside Flap

"Beautifully written, erudite, a perfect balance between theory and ethnography. The narratives are wonderful." E. Valentine Daniel, author of Charred Lullabies

"No book in medical anthropology matches No Aging in India in its extraordinary richness of ethnographic detail. A feast of stories, lives, and theory--it contains such a thickness of social experience that the reader feels he or she has become a part of India's local worlds. Lawrence Cohen has written one of the finest ethnographic monographs I have read. A triumph of field research and writing, this book will, I feel sure, set the standard for the next wave of ethnographies in medical anthropology." Arthur Kleinman, author of Writing at the Margin

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003BNZJBI
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; 1st edition (July 30, 1998)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 30, 1998
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 4778 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Not enabled
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 8 ratings

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Lawrence Cohen

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Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars
3.6 out of 5
8 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jai
3.0 out of 5 stars Tediously muddled ISO coherent editing
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2015
Verified Purchase
I looked forward to reading this acclaimed text in Medical Anthropology. But, once it arrived, I found it tedious. (That is: boring, dull, monotonous, repetitive, unrelieved, unvaried, uneventful; characterless, colorless, lifeless, insipid, uninteresting, unexciting, uninspiring, uninvolving, flat, bland, dry, stale, tired, lackluster, stodgy, dreary, mundane, monochrome; mind-numbing, soul-destroying, wearisome, tiring, tiresome, irksome, trying, frustrating; informal, deadly, not up to much, humdrum, ho-hum, blah, dullsville--man, that's a lot. So much that I had to borrow that list of synonyms from the Web :) But it's totally true. This appears to be s one of those media-is-the-message works, where presentation trumps content, and form is not intended to advance the understanding so much as present a cultural bric-a-brac to startle the senses. It started off with uninspired kowtows to anthropology of the body and Foucault, postures which always strikes me as oh-so-PC. So I bowed to these various Meccas And from there forward I struggled with every page, until, reaching page 147, I finally found myself unable to finish the book. And I put the text back on my shelf. At 300 pages of densely-spaced text in 6-point font, it is absolutely maddening to try to read. I'd find myself reading page after page and having absolutely no idea of the point he was making, or trying to make. Or maybe my assumption that he was actually trying to make a point was false, a bit of impostion on the text by the reader. Maybe the act of putting-into-words his semi-random stream of consciousness itself was the point. It would have benefited greatly by a slash-and-burn editing before seeing the light of publication, IMHO boil it down to 200 pages max with a coherent structure and argument. It was, in any event, a bit like reading Joyce bleary-eyed on a bad hair day. But that stream-of-consciousness POV seems to have been recognized & rewarded by the right tribes. I understand this book won the Victor Turner prize in ethnographic writing. Now I understand that that is some prestigious award. But to me, this speaks volumes as to what Medical Anthropology is, and is not; and it leaves to we other anthropologists of medicine what MA might actually be. 2 1/2 stars.
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D. Liu
5.0 out of 5 stars Approachable, yet profound
Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2006
As a medical student beginning research on Alzheimer's disease, this book provided me a deeper understanding of the full ramifications of such a disease on the lives of the patient and family members. The interactions described in this book are really quite complicated, yet the clear writing and organization makes this subject matter approachable.
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Top reviews from other countries

PUSHPANATHAN
4.0 out of 5 stars SECRETS OF AGEING
Reviewed in India on December 23, 2018
Verified Purchase
The author has brought out the secrets of ageing and how it is treated in India .
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