No Aging in India - by Lawrence Cohen (Paperback)

About the Book

"Beautifully written, erudite, a perfect balance between theory and ethnography. The narratives are wonderful."--E. Valentine Daniel, author of "Charred Lullabies"
"No book in medical anthropology matches "No Aging in India" in its extraordinary richness of ethnographic detail. A feast of stories, lives, and theory--it contains such a thickness of social experience that the reader feels he or she has become a part of India's local worlds. Lawrence Cohen has written one of the finest ethnographic monographs I have read. A triumph of field research and writing, this book will, I feel sure, set the standard for the next wave of ethnographies in medical anthropology."--Arthur Kleinman, author of "Writing at the Margin"

Book Synopsis

From the opening sequence, in which mid-nineteenth-century Indian fishermen hear the possibility of redemption in an old woman's madness, No Aging in India captures the reader with its interplay of story and analysis. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic work, Lawrence Cohen links a detailed investigation of mind and body in old age in four neighborhoods of the Indian city of Varanasi (Banaras) with events and processes around India and around the world. This compelling exploration of senility-encompassing not only the aging body but also larger cultural anxieties-combines insights from medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies. Bridging literary genres as well as geographic spaces, Cohen responds to what he sees as the impoverishment of both North American and Indian gerontologies-the one mired in ambivalence toward demented old bodies, the other insistent on a dubious morality tale of modern families breaking up and abandoning their elderly. He shifts our attention irresistibly toward how old age comes to matter in the constitution of societies and their narratives of identity and history.

From the Back Cover

"Beautifully written, erudite, a perfect balance between theory and ethnography. The narratives are wonderful."--E. Valentine Daniel, author of Charred Lullabies

"No book in medical anthropology matches No Aging in India in its extraordinary richness of ethnographic detail. A feast of stories, lives, and theory--it contains such a thickness of social experience that the reader feels he or she has become a part of India's local worlds. Lawrence Cohen has written one of the finest ethnographic monographs I have read. A triumph of field research and writing, this book will, I feel sure, set the standard for the next wave of ethnographies in medical anthropology."--Arthur Kleinman, author of Writing at the Margin

Review Quotes

"No Aging in India challenge[s] the ways in which we think about aging and senility, kinship and its undoing, medicine and the nation, language and the possibilities of ethnographic writing, and what it means to do the anthropology of South Asia. . . . [It] has helped to forge new openings and connections . . . in broader fields like anthropology, science and technology studies, South Asian Studies and critical gerontology." -- "Somatosphere"

"In studying 'what is not there' in India--aging as a disease--Cohen provides a richly documented view of what is there, especially of how people talk about things like Westernization and nuclear families as 'bad things.' No Aging in India packs in many details but also offers valuable comparative generalizations (with caution) that defy pure Geertzian guidelines about the sanctity of the local. . . . Monitoring the impacts of globalization and localization of Western views of aging, including gerontology, is another key area of future research prompted by this important book."-- "Pacific Affairs"

"This is a powerful, provocative book, rich with meaning. Lawrence Cohen weaves together challenging, revealing theory with vivid ethnographic images--of white-clad stooped women mingling with hungry dogs on the narrow lanes of Varanasi (Benaras); of a 'hot-minded' mother-in-law yelling out her window for someone to come save her, thus inculpating a 'Bad Family' and uncaring daughter-in- law; of an eager anthropologist trying to find senile old people with whom to do research. By the end the reader gains a new awareness of an important dimension of social and political life in India, as well as of what medical anthropology, gerontology, and ethnographic writing can be."-- "Anthropological Quarterly"

About the Author

Lawrence Cohen is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Critical Studies of Medicine, Science, and the Body at the University of California, Berkeley.