Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession : : Global Perspectives / / Sarah Lamb.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter RUP eBook-Package 2017
• TeilnehmendeR: Brooks, Abigail; Buch, Elana; Calasanti, Toni; Corwin, Anna; Danely, Jason; Farquhar, Judith; Jespersen, Astrid Pernille; King, Neal; Lamb, Sarah; Lassen, Aske Juul; Leibing, Annette; Loe, Meika; McIntosh, Janet; Robbins-Ruszkowski, Jessica; Taylor, Janelle S.; Wentzell, Emily; Whyte, Susan Reynolds; Woody, Imani; Zhang, Qicheng
• MitwirkendeR: Brooks, Abigail T.,; Buch, Elana D.,; Calasanti, Toni,; Corwin, Anna I.,; Danely, Jason,; Farquhar, Judith,; King, Neal,; Lamb, Sarah,; Lassen, Aske Juul,; Leibing, Annette,; Loe, Meika,; Mcintosh, Janet,; Pernille Jespersen, Astrid,; Reynolds Whyte, Susan,; Robbins-Ruszkowski, Jessica,; Taylor, Janelle S.,; Wentzell, Emily,; Woody, Imani,; Zhang, Qicheng,
• HerausgeberIn: Lamb, Sarah,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Global Perspectives on Aging
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (256 p.) :; 3 photographs

In recent decades, the North American public has pursued an inspirational vision of successful aging-striving through medical technique and individual effort to eradicate the declines, vulnerabilities, and dependencies previously commonly associated with old age. On the face of it, this bold new vision of successful, healthy, and active aging is highly appealing. But it also rests on a deep cultural discomfort with aging and being old. The contributors to Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession explore how the successful aging movement is playing out across five continents. Their chapters investigate a variety of people, including Catholic nuns in the United States; Hindu ashram dwellers; older American women seeking plastic surgery; aging African-American lesbians and gay men in the District of Columbia; Chicago home health care workers and their aging clients; Mexican men foregoing Viagra; dementia and Alzheimer sufferers in the United States and Brazil; and aging policies in Denmark, Poland, India, China, Japan, and Uganda. This book offers a fresh look at a major cultural and public health movement of our time, questioning what has become for many a taken-for-granted goal-aging in a way that almost denies aging itself.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Successful Aging as a Twenty-first- Century Obsession -- PART I. Gender, Sexuality, and the Allure of Anti-Aging -- 1. Successful Aging, Ageism, and the Maintenance of Age and Gender Relations -- 2. Opting In or Opting Out? North American Women Share Strategies for Aging Successfully with (and without) Cosmetic Intervention -- 3. Aging Out: Ageism, Heterosexism, and Racism among Aging African American Lesbians and Gay Men -- 4. Erectile Dysfunction as Successful Aging in Mexico -- PART II. Ideals of Independence, Interdependence, and Intimate Sociality in Later Life -- 5. Beyond Independence: Older Chicagoans Living Valued Lives -- 6. Growing Old with God: An Alternative Vision of Successful Aging among Catholic Nuns -- 7. Aspiring to Activity: Universities of the Third Age, Gardening, and Other Forms of Living in Postsocialist Poland -- 8. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot? Friendship in the Face of Dementia -- PART III. National Policies and Everyday Practices: Individual and Collective Projects of Aging Well -- 9. Getting Old and Keeping Going: The Motivation Technologies of Active Aging in Denmark -- 10. Foolish Vitality: Humor, Risk, and Success in Japan -- 11. Nurturing Life in Contemporary Beijing -- 12. Depreciating Age, Disintegrating Ties: On Being Old in a Century of Declining Elderhood in Kenya -- PART IV. Medicine, Morality, and Self: Lessons from Life's Ends -- 13. Successful Selves? Heroic Tales of Alzheimer's Disease and Personhood in Brazil -- 14. Comfortable Aging: Lessons for Living from Eighty-five and Beyond -- 15. Ageless Aging or Meaningful Decline? Aspirations of Aging and Dying in the United States and India -- Epilogue: Successful Aging and Desired Interdependence -- Notes on Contributors -- Index