Encounters with Aging - by Margaret M Lock (Paperback)

About the Book

"A powerful intervention into one of the most important debates of our time. Meticulous in her methods and wise in her insight, Lock tames a sea of stormy argument to show how complex and consequential is the interplay of culture and biology. Her book will make great strides toward her ultimate goal: to dislodge the myth of the Menopausal Woman."--Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago

Book Synopsis

Margaret Lock explicitly compares Japanese and North American medical and political accounts of female middle age to challenge Western assumptions about menopause. She uses ethnography, interviews, statistics, historical and popular culture materials, and medical publications to produce a richly detailed account of Japanese women's lives. The result offers irrefutable evidence that the experience and meanings-even the endocrinological changes-associated with female midlife are far from universal. Rather, Lock argues, they are the product of an ongoing dialectic between culture and local biologies.

Japanese focus on middle-aged women as family members, and particularly as caretakers of elderly relatives. They attach relatively little importance to the end of menstruation, seeing it as a natural part of the aging process and not a diseaselike state heralding physical decline and emotional instability. Even the symptoms of midlife are different: Japanese women report few hot flashes, for example, but complain frequently of stiff shoulders.

Articulate, passionate, and carefully documented, Lock's study systematically undoes the many preconceptions about aging women in two distinct cultural settings. Because it is rooted in the everyday lives of Japanese women, it also provides an excellent entree to Japanese society as a whole.

Aging and menopause are subjects that have been closeted behind our myths, fears, and misconceptions. Margaret Lock's cross-cultural perspective gives us a critical new lens through which to examine our assumptions.

From the Back Cover

A powerful intervention into one of the most important debates of our time. Meticulous in her methods and wise in her insight, Lock tames a sea of stormy argument to show how complex and consequential is the interplay of culture and biology. Her book will make great strides toward her ultimate goal: to dislodge the myth of the Menopausal Woman.--Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago

Review Quotes

"Encounters with Aging is a brilliant contribution not only to medical anthropology but also to gerontology and feminist theory. Others will have to evaluate the value of the work for Japanese studies, but I can't imagine it will not be enthusiastically received there as well. The book is long, as befits its complexity . . . but unfailingly literate, incisive, and passionate. It will have a wide audience, both lay and academic."-- "Medical Anthropology Quarterly"

"Lock's book is well written and comprehensive. Encounters with Aging uses many sources of data that range from cross-national survey research findings to lengthy ethnographic inter- views, to discussion and analysis of popular cultural representations. It reports on a long-term and mature research commitment. It represents . . . a most important ethnographic work on gender and age."-- "American Anthropologist"

About the Author

Margaret Lock is Professor Emerita in the Departments of Social Studies of Medicine and Anthropology at McGill University. She is coeditor of Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life (California, 1993) and author of East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan (California, 1980). In 2003, she was awarded the Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology, of the American Anthropology Association.