Book Review: Waiting on Retirement: Aging and Economic Insecurity in Low-Wage Work

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Profiles of Ethiopian centenarians: A qualitative inquiry

As global aging advances, the number of centenarians worldwide is greatly increasing. Most of what is known about centenarians comes the Global North. It is not clear what factors contribute to longevity of centenarians in impoverished, mostly rural areas of Global South nations that still lack basic amenities. Cultural differences in the profile, lifestyles, and needs of centenarians in Africa have yet to be documented. Using a case study design, this descriptive inquiry investigated the profiles of centenarians in Ethiopia including religion, marriage, education, occupation, income, and living arrangement. Data were generated through in-depth interviews with nine centenarians (1 woman, 8 men) and were analyzed using descriptive narrative analysis. Respondents were between 100 and 108 years old. All nine were adherents of Orthodox Christianity, had been married, and were great-grandparents. Their adult lives were marked by both residential and marital stability. The Ethiopian centenarians persevered through many losses and hardships with the help of strong community-based social networks.. Unlike studies of centenarians in the Global North, most respondents were male and had strict religious upbringings. Understanding the unique profiles of centenarians in the Global South will help to inform research and practice with this growing population of the oldest-old.

Recognizing Caregiving Fatigue in the Pandemic: Notes on Aging, Burden and Social Isolation in Emilia-Romagna, Italy

In Italy, the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns have provoked potentially serious short and long-term consequences for older people with serious health conditions as well as their family caregivers. With the closure of adult day-care centres and the suspension of private homecare services, families have needed to rearrange care activities and many are concerned about the situation of their relatives in residential homes. This article examines interpretations of aging and caregiving fatigue during the first period of national lockdown in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The relation between old age, lockdown, and social isolation, with respect to global ideas and rhetoric, focuses on vulnerability, individual autonomy, and caregiving fatigue. I examine how the representation of the ‘burden’ of caregiving in late age shaped the media depictions, and I analyze it in relation to the meanings of fatigue attached to narrations from family caregivers and the members of a local Alzheimer’s Café. I also focus on the life story of one family caregiver to critique the idealized vision of family care that was reproduced during the pandemic. I argue that the recognition of aging and caregiving fatigue during the lockdown reflected pre-existing normative models and structural inequalities of family care rather than radically altering them.

Book Review: Indigenous Peoples and Dementia: New Understandings of Memory Loss and Memory Care.

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Book Review: Rituals of Care: Karmic Politics in an Aging Thailand

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Education of values: Marketizing the aging population in urban China

In this article, I examine some of the marketing and sales strategies at Gardenview, a newly established eldercare company that ran a few residential eldercare facilities in Nanjing, China. There, like elsewhere in urban China, the projected aging demography was mobilized to push for an industrialization (chanyehua)—marketization and professionalization—of eldercare, transforming ideas and experience of eldercare by putting forward a new set of knowledge of aging. To this end, I first ground the rising eldercare industry in the transitioning paradigm of conceptualizing China’s population from population control to demographic aging. Then I explore ethnographically how Gardenview participated in the eldercare industry in a rapidly aging China. In particular, I look at the floorplans and the marketing stories as devices of the education of values—as prices, the good and desirable, and differentiators—to understand the social, economic, and ethical dynamics instigated by a transitioning demography. These values, as I show, are crucial in linking everyday life and choices with the paradigmatic shift of China’s population. Finally, I discuss how understanding the very processes of marketing and sales as an education of values could shed further light on what anthropologist Michael Fischer calls “literacies of the future” as a socially and economically elaborated and contested world of an aging China.

Meaning Making Among Older People in the Bible Belt in The Netherlands

In this ethnographic study, we examine how older Calvinist Protestants in a conservative rural area of the Netherlands experience “meaning in life.” We aim to contribute to current research on meaning in life within social and religious contexts. Here, we specify the concept of meaning in life as connectedness. The latter is broadly interpreted as an overarching conceptual component of existential meaning. Indeed, connectedness appears to be of paramount importance in these older villagers’ experiences of meaning in life. All three authors of this paper collaborated during fieldwork. We analyzed documents such as local newspapers, websites, and (church) newsletters. We visited farms and attended local meetings and gatherings such as church- and community- services, and we conducted qualitative interviews with 29 people. The outcomes of our research point to three forms of connectedness: (1) social connectedness; (2) physical connectedness; and (3) transcendent connectedness.

From the Editors: An Introduction

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Book Review: Growing Old in a New China: Transitions in Elder Care

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“Cinderella Men”: Husband- and Son- Caregivers for Elders with Dementia in Shanghai

Traditionally, women had the day-to-day responsibility for eldercare. However, social changes have created alternatives for men to take on what is generally considered a “female duty.” Particularly, as the prevalence of dementia has increased in China, men are increasingly becoming the primary caregivers for their kin. Yet, we have limited understanding of male caregiving. Based on twenty months’ ethnographic study of 60 men taking care of a relative with dementia, this paper examines motivations, practices, struggles and strategies of male caregivers. While acknowledging the gendered nature of caregiving, I argue that eldercare goes beyond solely social construction of gender roles and power asymmetries between males and females. Men—both husbands and sons—who engage in caregiving are motivated by love, affection, moral obligation, reciprocity based on past assistance, and property inheritance. Male caregivers’ care practices and their responses toward challenges vary from case to case, yet, these differences have less association with gender identity but more with cohort variations. The expanding home roles of male caregivers call attention to the social transformation of gendered care practices in China and beyond.