In the absence of a "gold standard," research on domestic violence relies primarily on self-report, the quality of which is known to decline as the length of the recall period increases. Eliciting valid and reliable self-report data is crucial to the development of prevention and intervention policies and services. Nevertheless, existing measures typically do not incorporate devices to facilitate respondents' recall of the lifetime experience of domestic violence. This article describes the application of the Life History Calendar (LHC) method (Freedman, Thornton, Camburn, Alwin, & Young-DeMarco, 1988) to increase a respondent's recall of domestic violence victimization over the lifecourse. The LHC method elicits memorable information of a personal nature (e.g., children's birth dates) and uses this information to facilitate the recall of less memorable events. A recent field test of this LHC measure indicates its utility in assessing domestic violence victimization, which takes place in a complex sequence of episodes and often involves multiple perpetrators over the lifecourse.

Living into older ages is changing from an exceptional to an expected part of the life course experience worldwide. Improvement in health and longevity across the lifespan also brings challenges for social work practice. At the same time, these changes are part of population aging trends that are not universal or inevitable. In addition, population aging discourse often reduces the complex dynamics of population aging to a problematic rise in older adults characterized as unproductive and dependent. Social workers can challenge the ageist construction of older adults by using our contextualized knowledge of how people age in their social environments.

In Ghana, older women may be marginalized, abused, and even killed as witches.  Media accounts imply this is common practice, mainly through stories of “witches camps” to which the accused may flee.  Anthropological literature on aging and on witchcraft, however, suggests that this focus exaggerates and misinterprets the problem.  This article presents a literature review and exploratory data on elder advocacy and rights intervention on behalf of accused witches in Ghana to help answer the question of how witchcraft accusations become an older woman’s problem in the context of aging and elder advocacy work. The ineffectiveness of rights based and formal intervention through sponsored education programs and development projects is contrasted with the benefit of informal conflict resolution by family and staff of advocacy organizations. Data are based on ethnographic research in Ghana on a rights based program addressing witchcraft accusations by a national elder advocacy organization and on rights based intervention in three witches camps.

This article uses three levels of body analysis as presented by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock to compare old age as a construct in population aging discourse with research on lived experience of people aging in the United States and Ghana. I first describe how demographers construct social bodies as becoming “gray” through population statistics and how policy makers then use dependency ratios to rationalize intervention on behalf of older adults in the body-politic.  The construction of old age within this discourse is then compared with ethnographic research that suggests this construct leaves out much of the lived experience familiar to anthropologists of aging.  Rather than debunk the old age construct, however, the purpose of this article is to argue for study of population aging discourse as constituting a social body reflecting cultural constructions of nature and society.  Moreover, this representation is made real through policy and social intervention work, and with very real effect on people’s lives. As such, an anthropology of aging bodies can include the social life of old age as a social construct.

Mediation is a process through which a third party facilitates discussion among disputing parties to help them identify interests and ideally reach an amicable solution. Elder mediation is a growing subspecialty to address conflicts involving older adults, primarily involving caregiving or finances. Mediation is theorized to empower participants but critics argue that it can exacerbate power imbalances among parties and coerce consensus. These contested claims are examined through study of a national caregiver mediation demonstration project. Study implications underscore the importance of gerontological social work expertise to ensure the empowerment of vulnerable older adults in mediation sessions.