Description
Book SynopsisAs anthropologists, we offer this book about aging in a wide variety of human societies in the hope of its making three contributions. First, this book will help to remedy a massive neglect of old age by the discipline of anthropology. The pioneering work of Leo Simmons (1945) has remained a lonely monument since the 1940''s, for despite recent interest in the subject of aging in modern Western societies on the part of social gerontologists and sociologists, little has been done by anthropologists on aging in non-Western societies. Where it has been treated at all, it has been in the form either of a few final paragraphs in the discussion of the life cycle or of a simple ethnographic fact among other facts about a certain social system. What has been missing has been any attempt to put aging in a cross-cultural or comparative perspective, to give this vital subject the same treatment that has been accorded marriage, for example, or death or inheritance or sex roles.
Second, th
Trade Review
'These perspectives on aging include a chapter from physical anthropology, one from primatology, and social structural studies from mile different cultures ... in the Kalahari Desert, northern Canada, Zambia, Micronesia, New Guinea, Afghanistan, Taiwan, South India, and North America's northwest coast. These studies are well-balanced in quality and coverage with respect to the organizational themes, and the authors' various styles of presentation keep the reading lively. It is an interesting book and should be useful as a text.' Science Books and Films (A.A.A.S.)
Table of Contents
Contents EISDORFER CARL AMOSS PAMELA T. HARRELL STEVAN WEISS KENNETH M. HRDY SARAH BLAFFER BIESELE MEGAN HOWELL NANCY SHARP HENRY S. ARSDALE PETER W. VAN COLSON ELIZABETH SCUDDER THAYER NASON JAMES D. SHAHRANI M. NAZIF HARRELL STEVAN HIEBERT PAUL G. AMOSS PAMELA T.
