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List of contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Note on Translation and Transliteration
Introduction: Perspectives through Age
Culture, Gender, and Multivocality
The Anthropology of Aging
The Body in Postmodern and Feminist Anthropology
Living in Mangaldihi
PART I: PERSONS AND FAMILIES
Personhoods
Entering a Net of Maya in Mangaldihi
Open Persons and Substantial Exchanges
Studying Persons Cross-culturally
2 Family Moral Systems
Defining Age
Long-Term Relations: Reciprocity and Indebtedness
Centrality and Peripherality
Hierarchies: Serving and Blessing
3 Conflicting Generations: Unreciprocated
Houseflows in a Modern Society
Contrary Pulls
The Degenerate Ways of Modern Society
Three Lives
PART II: AGING AND DYING
4 White Saris and Sweet Mangoes, Partings and Ties
The Problem of Maya
Loosening Ties, Disassembling Persons
Pilgrims, Beggars, and Old Age Home Dwellers
The Joys and Perils of Remaining "Hot" and Central, Even in a Ripe Old Age
The Values of Attachment and Renunciation
5 Dealing with Mortality
"How Am I Going to Die?"
Rituals of Death: Making and Remaking Persons and Families
Cutting Maya, the Separating of Ties
Extending Continuities
PART III: GENDERED TRANSFORMATIONS
6 Transformations of Gender and Gendered
Transformations
Gendered Bodies and Everyday Practices
Competing Perspectives: Everyday Forms of Resistance
The Changes of Age
Women, Maya, and Aging
7 A Widow's Bonds
Becoming a Widow
Sexuality and Slander, Devotion and Destruction
Unseverable Bonds
Afterword
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
About the author
Sarah Lamb is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University.
Summary
Explores beliefs and practices surrounding aging in a rural Bengali village. This book focuses on how villagers' visions of aging are tied to the making and unmaking of gendered selves and social relations over a lifetime. It explores ideals of family life and the intricate interrelationships between and within generations.
