Summary
Contents
Subject index
This fully revised Second Edition of Other Cultures, Elder Years is not only the textbook on the anthropology of aging, but also the most comprehensive, comparative study available on worldwide patterns of ageing. `Provides an excellent summary of secondary sources, avoiding extensive review of primary research, complicated theory, and methodological issues' - Clinical Gerontologist
The Anthropological Perspective
The Anthropological Perspective
The authors of this volume are anthropologists—cultural anthropologists—who, because of their training and scientific interests, look at the contemporary world in all its cultural complexity and variety and attempt to understand and interpret human behavior. A book on gerontology written by anthropologists may seem unusual, because most gerontologists are sociologists, psychologists, or social workers. Anthropologists have long been interested in the aged, but unfortunately mostly as sources of information on a non-Western culture as it was when they were young or before contact with white people and Western civilization. When Franz Boas (the father of American anthropology) sent out his Columbia University graduate students (Margaret Mead, Alfred Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Melville Herskovits, and others) with instructions to seek out the ...
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