Includes bibliographical references (p. [235]-254) and index.

FRAMEWORK. Introduction: Transitions and Transformations : Paradigms, Perspectives, and Possibilities / Jason Danely and Caitrin Lynch -- Changes in the Life Course: Strengths and Stages / Mary Catherine Bateson -- BODIES. Narrating Pain and Seeking Continuity : A Life-Course Approach to Chronic Pain Management / Lindsey Martin -- Venting Anger From the Body During Gengnianqi : Meanings of Midlife Transition Among Chinese Women in Reform-Era Beijing / Jeanne L. Shea -- "I Don't Want to Be Like My Father " : Masculinity, Modernity, and Intergenerational Relationships in Mexico / Emily Wentzell -- SPATIALITY AND TEMPORALITY. Shifting Moral Ideals of Aging in Poland : Suffering, Self-Actualization, and the Nation / Jessica C. Robbins -- A Window into Death : Euthanasia and End-of-Life in the Public-Private Space of the Dutch Home / Frances Norwood -- Temporality, Spirituality, and the Life Course in an Aging Japan / Jason Danely -- FAMILIES. "I Have to Stay Healthy" : Elder Caregiving and the Third Age in a Brazilian Community / Diana De G. Brown -- Grandmothering in Life-Course Perspective : A Study of Puerto Rican Grandmothers Raising Grandchildren in the United States / Marta B. Rodríguez-Galán -- Care Work and Property Transfers: Intergenerational Family Obligations in Sri Lanka / Michele Ruth Gamburd -- ECONOMIES. Personhood, Appropriate Dependence, and the Rise of Eldercare Institutions in India / Sarah Lamb -- Membership and Mattering: Agency and Work in a New England Factory / Caitrin Lynch -- Life Courses of Indebtedness in Rural Nigeria / Jane I. Guyer and Kabiru K. Salami -- Afterword: On Generations and Aging : "Fresh Contact" of a Different Sort / Jennifer Cole.

Rapid population aging, once associated with only a select group of modern industrialized nations, has now become a topic of increasing global concern. This volume reframes aging on a global scale by illustrating the multiple ways it is embedded within individual, social, and cultural life courses. The volume presents a broad range of ethnographic work, introducing a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to studying life-course transitions in conjunction with broader sociocultural transformations. Through detailed accounts, in such diverse settings as nursing homes in Sri Lanka, a factory in Massachusetts, cemeteries in Japan and clinics in Mexico, the authors explore not simply our understandings of growing older, but the interweaving of individual maturity and intergenerational relationships, social and economic institutions, and intimate experiences of gender, identity, and the body.

English.