Text

Thinking About Dementia: Culture, Loss, and the Anthropology of Senility

---

Bringing together essays by nineteen respected scholars, this volume approaches dementia from a variety of angles, exploring its historical, psychological, and philosophical implications. The authors employ a cross-cultural perspective that is based on ethnographic fieldwork and focuses on questions of age, mind, voice, self, loss, temporality, memory, and affect. Taken together, the essays make four important and interrelated contributions to our understanding of the mental status of the elderly. First, cross-cultural data show that the aging process, while biologically influenced, is also culturally constructed. Second, ethnographic reports raise questions about the diagnostic criteria used for defining the elderly as demented. Third, case studies show how a diagnosis affects a patient's treatment in both clinical and familial settings. Finally, the collection highlights the gap that separates current biological understandings of aging from its cultural meanings.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

-

Call Number

300

Publisher

: ., 2006

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780813538020

Classification

300

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

-

Subject(s)

Social Science

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other Information

Cataloger

Khusnun

Source

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment