Making Meaningful Lives - (Contemporary Ethnography) by Iza Kavedzija (Paperback)

About the Book

"A central concern of this book is the complex relationship between the good life, or what it means to live well, and one's sense of meaning or purpose in life. In the Japanese context, a useful starting point for exploring this issue is the concept of ikigai. This can be translated as "that which makes one's life worth living," or what makes life "livable," as it were. One might or might not "have" an ikigai--in which case the term refers to a particular motivation to live or a purpose in life. What and who one cares for is closely related to purpose in life, sometimes considered the basis of ikigai. In this sense, ikigai can refer to a more general form of well-being and pleasure in life, especially when used in relation to the elderly. This raises certain existential questions in relation to older age: does maintaining a particular purpose in life, a well-defined source of meaning, remain possible or even necessary in older age? Indeed, do even younger people have or need such a well-defined purpose? To what extent are life stories relating to meaning and purpose in one's life related to stories of expectations and values in the broader society? In short, I argue that the issues of aging and the good and meaningful life are inextricably connected"--

Book Synopsis

What makes for a meaningful life? In the Japanese context, the concept of ikigai provides a clue. Translated as "that which makes one's life worth living," ikigai has also come to mean that which gives a person happiness. In Japan, where the demographic cohort of elderly citizens is growing, and new modes of living and relationships are revising traditional multigenerational family structures, the elderly experience of ikigai is considered a public health concern. Without a relevant model for meaningful and joyful older age, the increasing older population of Japan must create new cultural forms that center the ikigai that comes from old age.

In Making Meaningful Lives, Iza Kavedzija provides a rich anthropological account of the lives and concerns of older Japanese women and men. Grounded in years of ethnographic fieldwork at two community centers in Osaka, Kavedzija offers an intimate narrative analysis of the existential concerns of her active, independent subjects. Alone and in groups, the elderly residents of these communities make sense of their lives and shifting ikigai with humor, conversation, and storytelling. They are as much providers as recipients of care, challenging common images of the elderly as frail and dependent, while illustrating a more complex argument: maintaining independence nevertheless requires cultivating multiple dependences on others. Making Meaningful Lives argues that an anthropology of the elderly is uniquely suited to examine the competing values of dependence and independence, sociality and isolation, intimacy and freedom, that people must balance throughout all of life's stages.

Review Quotes

"As people 65 and older will come to constitute 30 per cent of Japan's population in the next few years, Iza Kavedzija's ethnography is a highly significant book for understanding this era in the country's history...[U]nlike most studies of elderly people in Japan, which focus on frailty and decline, Kavedzija's skilful ethnography allows us to see her interlocutors first as human beings, continually striving for a good and enjoyable life...Kavedzija offers her readers a moving and intimate look at the lives of Japanese elders in the 2000s and 2010s."-- "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"

"Making Meaningful Lives is a carefully conducted and beautifully written ethnography about existential human questions: what is a meaningful life and how can we lead it? Iza Kavedziji explores these questions through the narratives of elderly people living in Osaka, Japan. In so doing, she adds a fresh and new perspective to the preponderance of literature on aging (in) Japan . . . [T]he book captivates not only through its detailed insights on the life worlds of the informants but also through its optimism and its fresh and new perspective on aging and on being elderly."-- "Contemporary Japan"

"Making Meaningful Lives is engrossing, beautifully written, and well-researched. It demonstrates compellingly that a book centered on aging and older persons can illuminate much broader processes."-- "Sarah Lamb, Brandeis University"

"[A]n excellent and timely contribution to the literature on Japan's aging society. It supplies a highly original ethnographic case study approach that allows the reader to view aging holistically from the inside out. Thanks to the quality and depth of documentation and interpretation, it also convincingly translates and interprets the aging experience...Making Meaningful Livesargues persuasively that aging requires a radical rethinking in terms of how society frames individually lived experiences and the human creation of meaning"-- "Japan Review"

About the Author

Iza Kavedzija is Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Philosophy, and Anthropology at the University of Exeter.