"The Best Is Yet To Be": Toward An Anthropology of Age

Keith, Jennie

doi:10.1146/annurev.an.09.100180.002011

Cited by 27 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…In relation to gender role transformation, they note that aging is accompanied by changes in the level of activity conducted and in the amount of authority held by individuals, as well as in the spheres where both activity and authority are exercised, and that these changes are often experienced differently by men and women. This statement falls far short of the gender role reversal or androgyny which has been posited by some scholars as a fact of later life (Gutmann et al 1980;Keith 1980), but the evidence of these South Pacific studies warrants this approach. Secondly, the editors note that the individual's meaningful participation in community life, and not the technological state of a society, determines how old age and death are experienced.…”

mentioning

confidence: 85%

Documenting the experience of aging in North America and abroad

Doucette¹

1991

Reviews in Anthropology

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mentioning

confidence: 85%

Documenting the experience of aging in North America and abroad

Doucette¹

1991

Reviews in Anthropology

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“…For example, in industrial and/or Western societies, respect for old age is typically low, in contrast with the dignity it is accorded in some other cultures (Powell & Hendricks, :85). Age‐segregated housing for the elderly is also a largely Western phenomenon, creating environments in which old age may be constructed in ways that are distinct from those found in the wider community or indeed in other cultures (Keith, :343–344).…”

Section: Age Beyond Numbers: the Complexity Of Age Ageing And Old Agementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cameron argues that in later life, it is the presence of both age‐ and sex‐segregation that triggers the expansion of quantitative linguistic differences between sexes relative to middle groups. By contrast, Keith () observes that in old‐age communities (e.g., retirement or care homes), sex roles may become blurred as women's and men's activities become less dissimilar. This suggests that social context and living arrangements may affect sex roles, which in turn may affect sex patterns of language variation: outside old‐age communities, sex‐based linguistic differences increase while inside such communities, they decrease.…”

Section: Listening To Older Adults: Key Reasons For Studying Old‐age mentioning

confidence: 99%

Old‐age language variation and change: Confronting variationist ageism

Pichler

Wagner

Hesson

2018

Language and Linguist. Compass

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The speech of older adults (65+ years old) is a rich resource for a wide range of researchers, including oral historians, developmental psychologists, health communication scholars, speech and hearing specialists, and discourse analysts. Yet in variationist sociolinguistics—the study of language variation, language change, and their social motivations—older adults have fallen afoul of a kind of scholarly ageism. Often consigned to the status of a historical benchmark against which the speech of younger people is compared, and with only rare acknowledgment of their biological, psychological and social diversity, old‐age speakers deserve greater attention. This article provides linguists with an overview of relevant conceptualizations of age and ageing in gerontology, explains why a focus on older speakers is critical to the advancement of the study of language variation and change, and offers practical suggestions for overcoming some of the challenges associated with old‐age research.

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“…Keith's (1980) statement that middle age women are often the linkers of other age groups most appropriately describes contemporary Harbour social life. Keith's (1980) statement that middle age women are often the linkers of other age groups most appropriately describes contemporary Harbour social life.…”

Section: Changing the Change Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

The newfoundland change of life: Insights into the medicalization of menopause

Davis

1989

J Cross-Cultural Gerontol

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Critics fault modern medicine for subdividing the process of aging into a series of stages that require medical intervention. This is especially true for middle age and the so-called female climacteric. The extent to which menopause has become medicalized in mainstream Western populations is illustrated by comparing groups of women who have come of age in a tradition of sophisticated medical consumerism to women who have come of age in a more marginal setting, where a combination of geographical isolation and poverty has delayed exposure to medical views of middle aging. Using ethnographic data gathered in a rural Newfoundland fishing village, this article explores the process by which women's notions of menopause as a natural part of the aging process have not yet been undermined by the recent introduction of medical services. Special attention is paid to the positive and negative roles that female social support networks may play in shaping women's experience of menopause.

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"The Best Is Yet To Be": Toward An Anthropology of Age

Cited by 27 publications

References 36 publications

Documenting the experience of aging in North America and abroad

Documenting the experience of aging in North America and abroad

Old‐age language variation and change: Confronting variationist ageism

The newfoundland change of life: Insights into the medicalization of menopause

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