For Review

Books and Multimodal Works for Review

This is a list of books available for review in Anthropology & Aging. If you are interested in reviewing one of these titles or have a suggestion for a book that you would like to see reviewed that is not included in this list, please send this information, including the book format you prefer (we encourage e-versions whenever available) to the Anthropology & Aging Book Reviews and Media editor, Christopher Zraunig (christopher.zraunig(at)uni-jena.de).

Please make sure to include your full name, address, and a brief description of your areas of expertise or background that qualifies you for writing a review in this email. If your request is approved, you will receive additional instructions on composing the review. Reviews are typically 1000-1200 words long and submitted within three months of the receipt of the title. Reviews of films, performances, exhibits, or other media with relevance to the anthropology of aging are also welcome!

 

BOOKS FOR REVIEW

Bloom, Allison. Violence Never Heals: The Lifelong Effects of Intimate Partner Violence for Immigrant Women. 2023. New York: NYU Press. pp. 224. Price: $30.00 (Paperback); $21.00 (eBook); $94.00 (Hardcover). ISBN: 9781479822058.  https://nyupress.org/9781479822058/violence-never-heals/

Across the United States, one in three women experiences violence in their intimate relationships. More resources are now being devoted to providing these women with immediate care; but what happens to survivors, especially those from marginalized communities, as they grow older and grapple with the long-term effects? In Violence Never Heals, Allison Bloom presents a life-course perspective on the disabling experience of violence in Latina immigrant communities.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork performed in a Latina program at an Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) crisis center, Bloom offers insights into the long-term effects of systemic and gender-based violence, revealing that these experiences become subtly disabling long before old age. Drawing from her own background as a practitioner, Bloom further details how current IPV services fail to acknowledge and accommodate such effects, in large part because of their disproportionate focus on younger survivors and the particular development of the domestic violence services field. She offers both scholars and practitioners concrete strategies for how they can alter their approaches to better treat and mitigate the lifelong effects of domestic violence. Violence Never Heals addresses a glaring omission in IPV scholarship, providing both an aging-focused perspective on IPV as well as laying out concrete steps for how to implement this perspective in pursuit of more comprehensive treatment.

 

Bloom, David E., Alfonso Sousa-Poza, and Uwe Sunde, eds. The Routledge Handbook of the Economics of Ageing. 2023. London: Routledge. pp. 798. Price: $88.25 (Paperback); $366 (Hardcover); $75 (eBook). https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-the-Economics-of-Ageing/Bloom-Sousa-Poza-Sunde/p/book/9780367713454)

 

Ageing populations pose some of the foremost global challenges of this century. Drawing on an international pool of scholars, this cutting-edge Handbook surveys the micro, macro and institutional aspects of the economics of ageing. Structured in seven parts, the volume addresses a broad range of themes, including health economics, labour economics, pensions and social security, generational accounting, wealth inequality and regional perspectives. Each chapter combines a succinct overview of the state of current research with a sketch of a promising future research agenda. This Handbook will be an essential resource for advanced students, researchers and policymakers looking at the economics of ageing across the disciplines of economics, demography, public policy, public health and beyond.

 

 

Bühler, Nolwenn, Nils Graber, Victoria Boydell, and Cinzia Greco, eds. The Chronopolitics of Life: Rethinking Temporalities in Health and Biomedicine Beyond the Life Course. 2025. London: UCL Press. pp. 224. Open access (free PDF); Price: $60.00 (Paperback). Series: Embodying Inequalities: Perspectives from Medical Anthropology. https://uclpress.co.uk/book/the-chronopolitics-of-life/

 

This interdisciplinary collection examines the role of time in inequalities within biomedicine, technology, and healthcare. How is time wielded as a tool of power through its valuation, standardization, and allocation? How has time become an unequally distributed resource in health and biomedicine, and how has it contributed to medical discrimination for patients at different stages of life? To answer these questions, The Chronopolitics of Life draws on real-world examples from across the globe, spanning from reproductive health to chronic disease, and sensitive to both local variations in medicine and the wider forces shaping temporalities in health.

 

Cain, Cindy L. Called to Care? Health Care, Burnout, and the Search for Meaningful Work. 2026. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Price: $32.95. ISBN: 9781978839304 https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/called-to-care/9781978839304

Health care workers are burned out. Health care leaders know that workers are burned out but do not yet have the right tools to fix the problem. Called to Care? argues that we can mitigate burnout by examining what is most meaningful about health care work. Using interviews and observation of a wide range of health care workers, Cain shows that workers who care for our most vulnerable adults find their work to be meaningful when they are able to connect to the work and make progress on something that matters. In most cases, these meaningful experiences are also consistent with better care for patients. And yet organizational practices, policy environments, and cultural meanings get in the way of meaningful work, creating burnout. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Called to Care? illustrates that workplaces can and should align meaningful work experiences with quality care for patients.

 

Corwin, Anna I. Embracing Age: How Catholic Nuns Became Models of Aging Well. 2021. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. pp. 202. Price: $120.00 (Hardcover); $29.95 (Paperback); Open access eBook (NEH Fellowship Open Book Program). Series: Global Perspectives on Aging. https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/embracing-age/9781978822276

 

This book examines a community of individuals whose aging trajectories contrast mainstream American experiences. In mainstream American society, aging is presented as a “problem,” a state to be avoided as long as possible, a state that threatens one’s ability to maintain independence, autonomy, control over one’s surroundings. Aging “well” (or avoiding aging) has become a twenty-first century American preoccupation. Embracing Age provides a window into the everyday lives of American Catholic nuns who experience longevity and remarkable health and well-being at the end of life. Catholic nuns aren’t only healthier in older age, they are healthier because they practice a culture of acceptance and grace around aging. Embracing Age demonstrates how aging in the convent becomes understood by the nuns to be a natural part of the life course, not one to be feared or avoided. Anna I. Corwin shows readers how Catholic nuns create a cultural community that provides a model for how to grow old, decline, and die that is both embedded in American culture and quite distinct from other American models.

 

Costantini, Hiroko. Men, Care and Well-being in Super-aged Japan: Male Family Carers in a Society in Transition.2026. London: UCL Press. Pp. 254. Open access (free PDF); print editions available. ISBN: 9781806550708. https://uclpress.co.uk/book/men-care-and-well-being-in-super-aged-japan/

 

Men, Care and Well-being in Super-aged Japan offers an innovative perspective on social sustainability by examining men’s well-being through their involvement in caring for older family members. Focusing on super-aged Japan, the book provides a valuable way to understand key social challenges relevant to countries on the cusp of an ageing society. In contrast to the predominant focus on men in the workplace, this study shifts attention to men in the family – such as men as sons, sons-in-law, husbands and grandsons – whose roles in care remain understudied.

The first part explores men’s care relations in the context of their extended family relations, including the emergence of sons-in-law in care. The second part widens the perspective to include the domain of work and related policies to understand how men reconcile care and work. The third part situates men’s caregiving in the broader societal context, including attention to the author’s novel notion of ‘care literacy’. The structure provides specialists across relevant fields – such as well-being, masculinity, gender relations and care systems – greater flexibility in accessing relevant sections. Further, the design of parts and chapters supports the book’s use as teaching material in undergraduate and graduate courses.

 

Danely, Jason. Carceral Circuits and Old Age in Japan. 2024. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Pp. 184. Price: $19.99 (ePub and PDF); 34,95 (Paperback); 99.95 (Hardcover). ISBN: 9780826507006. https://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/9780826507006/unsettled-futures/

 

There are two prevailing myths about Japanese society: first, that it has a successful elderly welfare system and second, that it has a successful criminal justice system. Both of these myths reinforce a social imaginary where cultural values of family and community harmony make extensive state intervention unnecessary. Yet not only are both of these myths and their arguments deeply flawed, but they also obscure the more troubling reality that institutions of welfare and punishment in Japan are co-extensive, both keeping Japan’s growing population of “excess” older people contained and controlled rather than providing ways for them to integrate and flourish.

Elderly ex-offenders are some of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in Japan today, with high levels of poverty and homelessness, disability, mental health problems, and social isolation. Those with a history of incarceration and, by extension, their family, face stigma and discrimination that further erodes their ability to reintegrate and puts them at greater risk of reoffe. nding. Unlike in any other country in the world, older people in Japan have a higher rate of reoffending than other age groups. In Unsettled Futures, author Jason Danely argues that we cannot dismiss these individuals merely as deviants; rather, their circumstances reveal deep contradictions in the overlapping terrain of welfare and punishment, and the precarity that forecloses on possibilities for older people to build a good life.

 

Davis, Boyd, and Margaret Maclagan, eds. Dementia Caregiving East and West: Issues of Communication. 2023. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 180. Price: $ 80 (Hardcover); $ 40,5 (Paperback).https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-8463-1.

This book pulls together current practical and adaptable communicative approaches to dementia care from western and eastern researchers, promoting cross-collaboration and global sharing of information.

Discussions of communicative interactions involving caregivers, whether local or migrant, professional or family, are an important part of global aging and aging education. Different countries around the world have different systems and policies governing aging, healthcare, and caregiving as do the different cultures within them. What isn’t different, however, is that dementia occurs in each country and each culture, although it may be acknowledged differently and may or may not be stigmatized or hidden. Ways of looking at dementia caregiving and carework have expanded across multiple cultures and countries, but are not always collected and made conveniently available.

In dementia caregiving, communication with the caregiver is widely seen as the most helpful non-pharmacological means of assistance, especially in the family-care context. This collection will be attractive across multiple fields as it presents practical and adaptable discussions of communicative interactions in dementia caregiving contributed by senior and junior researchers in anthropology, art therapy, counseling, gerontology, linguistics and nursing

Dohotariu, Anca, Ana Paula Gil, and Lubica Volanská, eds.  Politicising and Gendering Care for Older People: Multidisciplinary Perspectives from Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 256. Price: $ 122 (Hardcover). ISBN: 9781526175991. https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526175991/

 

This book offers a new critical framework for understanding the processes of politicising and gendering care for older people and their manifestations in several European contexts. It interrogates how care for older adults varies across time and place while searching for an in-depth comprehension of how it becomes an arena of political struggle and the object of public policy in different countries and at various societal and political levels. It brings together multidisciplinary contributions that examine the issue of care for older people as a political concern from many angles, such as problematising care needs, long-term care policies, home care services, institutional services and family care. The contributions reveal the diversity of situations in which the processes of politicising and gendering care for older adults overlap, contradict or reinforce each other while leading to increased gender (in)equalities on different levels.

 

Douglas, Cristina, and Andrew Whitehouse, eds. More-than-Human Aging: Animals, Robots, and Care in Later Life. 2024. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 230. Price: $ 40.95 (eBook and Paperback); $125 (Hardcover). ISBN: 9781978840942. https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/more-than-human-aging/9781978840942.

 

What does later life look like when it is lived in the companionship of other species? Similarly, how do other species age (or not) with humans, and what sort of (a)symmetries, if any, are brought to light around how we understand and think about aging? So far, aging has been investigated in the social sciences in purely human terms. This is the first collection of original work that considers aging as taking place in relation to other species. This volume aims to start a conversation about aging by taking its more-than-human participants seriously—that is, not only as a support for or context of human aging but also, more symmetrically, as agents and subjects in the process of aging. The contributors draw upon richly descriptive ethnographic accounts, including moments of connection between seniors and dogs in a long-term care facility, human care for aging laboratory animals, and robotic companionship in later life. The ethnographies in this volume not only enrich our understanding of more-than-human companionship during the human aging process but also challenge and urge us to rethink what it means to live later in life in ecologically entangled social and moral worlds.

 

Douglas, Cristina, and Andrew Whitehouse, eds. More-than-Human Aging: Animals, Robots, and Care in Later Life. 2024. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. pp. 230. Series: Global Perspectives on Aging. ISBN: 978-1-9788-4093-5 (Paperback); 978-1-9788-4094-2 (Hardcover). https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/more-than-human-aging/9781978840935

 

What does later life look like when it is lived in the companionship of other species? Similarly, how do other species age (or not) with humans, and what sort of (a)symmetries, if any, are brought to light around how we understand and think about aging? So far, aging has been investigated in the social sciences in purely human terms. This is the first collection of original work that considers aging as taking place in relation to other species. This volume aims to start a conversation about aging by taking its more-than-human participants seriously—that is, not only as a support for or context of human aging but also, more symmetrically, as agents and subjects in the process of aging. The contributors draw upon richly descriptive ethnographic accounts, including moments of connection between seniors and dogs in a long-term care facility, human care for aging laboratory animals, and robotic companionship in later life. The ethnographies in this volume not only enrich our understanding of more-than-human companionship during the human aging process but also challenge and urge us to rethink what it means to live later in life in ecologically entangled social and moral worlds.

 

 

Garvey, Pauline, and Daniel Miller, eds. The Anthropology of Retirement: Life Beyond Work. 2025. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. pp. 218. Price: $135.00/£104.00 (Hardcover). Series: Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations, vol. 12. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/MillerAnthropology

 

As a result of growing life expectancy, the period of retirement is likely to surpass the entire period of working life in many countries. There is little acknowledgement that retirement is not an event but an extended period of life that unfolds over several decades. Experiences vary considerably across the globe, from areas where most people cannot afford to retire to places where a multitude of new possibilities are being developed for retirees. This book is an anthropological approach to consider life beyond retirement in a wide range of contexts and consequences.

 

Gill, Harmandeep Kaur. Waiting at the Mountain Pass: Coming to Terms with Solitude, Decline and Death in Tibetan Exile. 2024. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 312. Price: $44.95 (eBook and Paperback); $120 (Hardcover). https://www.pennpress.org/9781512827354/waiting-at-the-mountain-pass/

 

An intimate meditation on aging and dying in exile among elderly Tibetans in Dharamsala, India

In a Tibetan saying, the journey of life is likened to a climb up to a mountain pass. Upon reaching it, the journey concludes and one must cross over into death and the next rebirth. The impermanence of life—described by the Buddha as the nature of reality—crystallizes at the mountain pass, manifesting itself through the painful and arduous descent ahead and a series of sufferings.

In this book, Harmandeep Kaur Gill offers an intimate meditation on the last part of the journey at the mountain pass through closely drawn portraits of elderly, exiled Tibetans who aged in Dharamsala, India, far away from their beloved homeland of Tibet, and often alone, in the absence of family. In Gill’s work, the mountain pass represents a “borderland,” an in-between world, where the elderly found themselves living at the crossroad between life and death, belonging fully to neither of them. It was a time-space where everyday life traversed between past and present, in darkness and light, and in dream and reality, as the elderly attempted to come to terms with the realities of their old age.

By placing relational entanglements and sensations at the heart of its theorization, Waiting at the Mountain Pass foregrounds an embodied knowing that is care-ful, hesitant, and unresolved in its claims. Aiming to bridge the gap between ethics and epistemology, Gill invites the reader to see and listen in a relational and imaginative way where the other reflects back upon the self, making the assumed separations between subject and object blurry and unsettling. Through meditations on the interrelations of body and mind, society and individual, and the real and the imagined, Waiting at the Mountain Pass provides a sensorial and compassionate understanding of the singularities of life and death in a Tibetan Buddhist world in exile.

 

Golomski, Casey. In God's Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life's End. 2024. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 238. Price: $30.95 (eBook and Paperback); $135 (Hardcover). ISBN: 9781978840614. https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/god-s-waiting-room/9781978840614

Can older racists change their tune, or will they haunt us further once they're gone? Rich in mystery and life's lessons, God's Waiting Room considers what matters in the end for older white adults and the younger Black nurses who care for them. An innovation in creative nonfiction, Casey Golomski's story of his years of immersive research at a nursing home in South Africa, thirty years after the end of apartheid, is narrated as a one-day, room-by-room tour. The story is told in breathtakingly intimate and witty conversations with the home's residents and nurses, including the untold story of Nelson Mandela's Robben Island prison nurse, and readers learn how ageism, sexism, and racism intersect and impact health care both in South Africa and in the United States, as well as create conditions in which people primed to be enemies find grace despite the odds.

 

Guruge, Sepali, ed. Intersections of Aging and Immigration: The Promise and Paradox of a Better Life. 2024. Toronto: Toronto Metropolitan University. Price: Open Access. https://pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca/intersections/

 

This book examines the intersections of aging and immigration in Canada, examining the unique challenges faced by older immigrants. Section 1 introduces critical issues related to aging and immigration, highlighting health disparities shaped by social determinants such as gender, racism, and access to services. Chapters 1 and 2 explore how these structural barriers affect the health and well-being of older immigrants, with a focus on social exclusion and systemic inequities. Section 2 discusses the health statuses of older immigrant women and men, emphasizing the need for culturally tailored services. Section 3 addresses socioeconomic factors like social isolation and housing insecurity, illustrating how older immigrants navigate these challenges in Canada. Section 4 focuses on caregiving, examining family care partners' roles and the mismatches between caregiver needs and available support. Section 5 tackles service access, identifying key barriers and exploring potential interventions for improving elder care in immigrant communities. Section 6 concludes by addressing research and policy considerations, particularly the importance of inclusive, community-based research and the role of social infrastructure in promoting well-being. Together, these sections provide a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted experiences of older immigrants in Canada, urging for systemic change and more equitable support structures.

 

Haapio-Kirk, Laura. Ageing with Smartphones in Japan: Care in a Visual Digital Age. 2024. London: UCL Press. pp. 287. Price: Open Access (eBook). ISBN: 9781787355767. https://uclpress.co.uk/book/ageing-with-smartphones-in-japan/

 

Older adults in Japan, one of the most ageing countries in the world, are starting to adopt the smartphone. What does this mean for friendship, gendered labour, multigenerational living, internal migration, health and indeed purpose in life (ikigai)? Based on 16 months of ethnographic research in urban Kyoto and in rural Kōchi Prefecture, Ageing with Smartphones in Japan follows people as they navigate social and personal shifts post-retirement.

 

Examining how older women and men negotiate oppressive structures within society, the smartphone emerges as both challenging and perpetuating gender-based norms around care. In witnessing the response of older adults to the wider context of societal ageing and the various forms of precarity that it can engender, this book observes how people creatively navigate the challenges and opportunities of later life to define their own experience of ageing.

The rise of digital visual communication among people in their 50s and older opens new possibilities for sociality and proximity among friends and family. It also presents a methodological challenge for researchers. This book responds with a series of graphic methodological experimentations, including co-created comics, participant drawings, and the author’s own fieldwork sketches and imaginative illustrations, to explore this fundamental shift in communication towards digital images.

 

 

Hänninen, Riitta, Sakari Taipale, and Laura Haapio-Kirk, eds. Digital Repertoires: Embedded and Everyday Technologies in Later Life. 2025. London: UCL Press. Pp. 286. Open access (free PDF); paperback and eBook editions available. ISBN: 9781800088443 (Open Access PDF); 9781800088450 (Paperback); 9781800088467 (eBook). https://uclpress.co.uk/book/digital-repertoires/

 

Digital Repertoires explores the intersection between ageing and technology, presenting the concept of ‘digital repertoire’ as a powerful tool for researchers across disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, gerontology, public policy, communication studies and design. This book offers new theoretical and empirical insights, and highlights the diverse ways in which older adults engage with digital technologies across five continents. With studies from Australia, Brazil, Finland, Japan, the Philippines and Sweden, the book provides a global and cross-cultural analysis on a pressing issue.

 

The notion of the digital repertoire has broad appeal, making this book relevant not only to scholars and practitioners focused on ageing but to anyone interested in the heterogeneity of digital technology use across different age groups and cultural contexts. With a balanced approach that combines conceptual, theoretical and empirical perspectives, this volume is an essential resource for teaching, research and practice in the ever-evolving field of digital technology studies, as well as the development of technology for older adults.

 

 

Hartung, Heike, Roberta Maierhofer, and Christian Schmitt-Kilb, eds. Masculinities Ageing between Cultures: Relationality, Kinship and Care in Dialogue. 2024. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. Pp. 244. Open access (free PDF); print editions available. ISBN: 9783837669060. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/masculinities-ageing-between-cultures/9783837669060/

Global mobility is one of the crucial phenomena of our time. Combining the theoretical frameworks of masculinity studies and age studies, the contributors to this volume examine the intersection of cultural exchange, gender and age, exploring ageing masculinities with reference to the key concepts of relationality, kinship and care. The essays analyze transcultural experiences of ageing men from Europe, relationships including the Indian diaspora in the US, Chinese father images in the US-American context and Black British queer kinship, drawing its examples also from Brazilian society and African European contexts.

 

 

Hawkins, Charlotte, Patrick Awondo, and Daniel Miller, eds. An Anthropological Approach to mHealth. 2024. London: UCL Press. Pp. 279. Open access (free PDF); print editions available. ISBN: 9781787354234. https://uclpress.co.uk/book/an-anthropological-approach-to-mhealth/

This book proposes a radically different anthropological approach to the development and dissemination of mobile health (mHealth), a rapidly growing sector in healthcare. An Anthropological Approach to mHealth is based on ten 16-month ethnographies in settings across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America that showed how conventional health apps may be irrelevant particularly for older people. Instead, the studies found that many people use their mobile and smartphones for health purposes to a surprising extent. They take the communicative apps they have become comfortable with, such as LINE, WeChat and WhatsApp, and are highly creative in turning them into their own health apps. These are the practices from which this book seeks to learn, in what we call a ‘smart-from-below’ approach.

This body of research also provided many additional insights, including the consequences of googling for health information, the role of the smartphone in specific settings such as an oncology clinic in Chile or tele-psychotherapy in Uganda, and the lessons learnt during Covid-19 around the problems in self-tracking. Overall, the authors show how an anthropological approach situated in the observation of everyday life can be the foundation for an alternative but highly promising perspective on the future of mHealth.

 

Iacub, Ricardo, Paul Simpson, and Trish Hafford-Letchfield, eds. Ageing, Sex, and Disability: New Aesthetics and Critical Perspectives. 2026. Bristol: Policy Press. Price: $135.00. Series: Sex and Intimacy in Later Life. ISBN: 978-1-4473-7597-5. https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/ageing-sex-and-disability

What if we reimagined ageing, illness and disability not as barriers to sexuality – but as starting points for new forms of desire, intimacy and pleasure? This groundbreaking book challenges the silence and stigma surrounding the sexuality of older, ill and disabled people. Drawing from sociology, health studies, cultural theory and lived experience, the authors explore diverse expressions of sexuality that defy long-established views.From queer ageing to sex work and legal rights, this collection offers bold, inclusive perspectives and policy ideas that centre pleasure, agency and dignity. A vital resource for academics, practitioners and anyone invested in social inclusion and justice.

 

Jenkins, Nicholas, Anna Jack-Waugh, and Louise Ritchie, eds. Multi-Species Dementia Studies: Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach. 2025. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Pp. 194. ISBN: 9781447368809. https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/multi-species-dementia-studies

Dementia is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. Responding to the global dementia challenge, however, affects more than humans alone. We live in a multi-species world but often think about dementia in mono-species ways. From the lab to the living room, other beings are “on the scene” and our relations with them affect how we understand, experience, and respond to dementia. Drawing on cutting-edge work across the social and biological sciences, this book offers readers the tools to respond to dementia in multi-species ways. By exploring a range of topics, from pathology to personhood, contributors highlight how thinking about dementia as a more-than-human phenomenon may enable new ways of responding to our global dementia challenge.

 

Kingstone, Helen, and Jennie Bristow, eds. Studying Generations: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. 2024. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Pp. 186. Open access (free PDF); print editions available. ISBN: 9781529223491. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/studying-generations

The concept of ‘generations’ has become a widely discussed area, with recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic revealing our dependence on intergenerational relationships both within and beyond the family. However, the concept can often be misunderstood, which can fuel divisions between age groups rather than generating solutions.

This collection introduces and explores the growing field of generational studies, providing a comprehensive overview of its strengths and limitations. With contributions from academics across a range of disciplines, the book showcases the concept’s interdisciplinary potential by applying a generational lens to fields including sociology, literature, history, psychology, media studies and politics.

Offering fresh perspectives, this original collection is a valuable addition to the field, opening new avenues for generational thinking.

 

Knight, Frederick C. Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom. 2024. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 248. Price: $39.95 (Hardcover).https://www.pennpress.org/9781512825664/black-elders/

 

Would there have been a Frederick Douglass if it were not for Betsy Bailey, the grandmother who raised him? Would Harriet Jacobs have written her renowned autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, if her grandmother, a free black woman named Molly Horniblow, had not enabled Jacobs’ escape from slavery? In Black Elders, Frederick C. Knight explores the experiences of African Americans with aging and in old age during the eras of slavery and emancipation. Though slavery put a premium on young labor, elders worked as caregivers, domestics, cooks, or midwives and performed other tasks in the margins of Southern and Northern economies. Looking at black families, churches, mutual aid societies, and homes for the aged, Knight demonstrates the pivotal role of elders in the history of African American community formation through Reconstruction. Drawing on a wide array of printed and archival sources, including slave narratives, plantation records, letters, diaries, meeting minutes, and state and federal archives, Knight also examines how blacks and whites, men and women, the young and the old developed competing ideas about age and aging, differences that shaped social relations in coastal West and West Central Africa, the Atlantic and domestic slave trades, colonial and antebellum Southern slave societies, and emancipation in the North and South.

 

Lewis, Jordan P., and Tuula Heinonen, eds. Social Aspects of Aging in Indigenous Communities. 2023. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 468. Price: £48.99 (Hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-19-767721-6.https://global.oup.com/academic/product/social-aspects-of-aging-in-indigenous-communities-9780197677216?cc=us&lang=en&

 

This book represents a collection of chapters by authors committed to Indigenous aging around globe and older adults' contributions to their social, economic, and cultural environments. As the number of older people around the world continues to increase, it is important for families, communities, governments, and nations to have a better understanding of their older adults and their unique contributions, as well as their interests and needs, to ensure that they are able to age with dignity and respect and contribute to the overall health and well-being of their people and environments. The volume will include chapters from authors representing Indigenous populations from many parts of the world, who describe; 1) research studies on the social aspects of aging among Indigenous populations, including cultural, social, and/or economic contributions of older Indigenous adults in their communities, 2) perceptions of aging and well-being among international Indigenous populations, 3) theories about Indigenous aging, and 4) policy and intervention practices (i.e., programs and services) related to older Indigenous adults.

 

 

 

Mogseth, Martin Eggen, and Fartein Hauan Nilsen, eds. Limits of Life: Reflections on Life, Death, and the Body in the Age of Technoscience. 2024. New York: Berghahn Books. Pp. 156. ISBN: 9781805395683. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/MogsethLimits

New technologies and scientific imagination rearrange the boundary that we identify as the beginning and end of life. New techno-social constellations, such as the ever-increasing presence of digital avatars and genetic screenings, implore us to reconsider and transcend the existing definitions of life and death. Through a multidisciplinary approach, this volume explores how the limitations and perceived finality of life and death are reconstituted through engagements with modern technology.

 

Otaegui, Alfonso. Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Chile: The Experience of Peruvian Migrants. 2023. London: UCL Press. Pp. 211. Open access (free PDF); print editions available. ISBN: 9781800084629. https://uclpress.co.uk/book/ageing-with-smartphones-in-urban-chile/

What does it mean to be ageing in Chile as a migrant? What does it mean to be late middle-aged nowadays? How does living half of your life in a foreign country impact perspectives on later life? Is retirement an opportunity to go back to the home country? What will happen to the next generation, raised in a different country from their parents?

Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Chile analyses the experience of ageing for Peruvian migrants aged around 60, who have lived in Chile for over 20 years. Their lives are informed by a series of experiences of being in between. They live between two countries, two generations (their Peruvian parents and their Chilean children), two different stages in life (retained youth and menacing old age), between giving care (to their parents) and not wanting care (from their children) and between a continuing legacy (through their children, who have a promising future) and not transmitting legacy (some traditions will not pass on to the next generation).

Peruvian migration has been one of the most studied in Chile. However, neither the experience of ageing of migrants in Chile nor the experience of late middle age has been fully addressed yet. By focusing on the entanglement of ageing, migration and technology, this monograph is an ethnographic contribution to an unexplored subject in the vast literature on migration studies in Chile.

 

Pérez Murcia, Luis Eduardo. A Long Journey Home: Losing and Remaking Home Following Conflict and Displacement. 2025. New York: Berghahn Books. Pp. 228. Open access (free PDF). ISBN: 9781836951360 https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PerezMurciaLong

Advancing contemporary scholarly debates on the role of home in understanding displacement and emplacement, A Long Journey Home explores powerful personal narratives from Colombia. The book examines the experiences of those whose sense of home has been disrupted by decades of conflict and violence. It highlights the profound feelings of loss and the enduring struggle of living without a home – an experience that can last for years or even decades. Through these stories, the book reveals how internally displaced people use creativity and imagination to remake their home while on the move.

 

Sangaramoorthy, Thurka. Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America. 2023. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Pp. 196. Open access (free PDF and ePub); print editions available. ISBN: 9781469674179. https://uncpress.org/9781469674179/landscapes-of-care/

This insightful work on rural health in the United States examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean, navigate the health care system in the United States. Since 1990, immigration to the United States has risen sharply, and rural areas have seen the highest increases. Thurka Sangaramoorthy reveals that that the corporatization of health care delivery and immigration policies are deeply connected in rural America. Drawing from fieldwork that centers on Maryland’s sparsely populated Eastern Shore, Sangaramoorthy shows how longstanding issues of precarity among rural health systems along with the exclusionary logics of immigration have mutually fashioned a “landscape of care” in which shared conditions of physical suffering and emotional anxiety among immigrants and rural residents generate powerful forms of regional vitality and social inclusion. Sangaramoorthy connects the Eastern Shore and its immigrant populations to many other places around the world that are struggling with the challenges of global migration, rural precarity, and health governance. Her extensive ethnographic and policy research shows the personal stories behind health inequity data and helps to give readers a human entry point into the enormous challenges of immigration and rural health.

Santos, Ana Cristina. A Research Agenda for Queer Ageing. 2026. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Price: $125.00. ISBN: 978-1-0353-3708-8.

 

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. This insightful Research Agenda examines sexual and gender diversity among older people. Expert authors explore how social attitudes, laws, activism and social policies contribute both directly and indirectly to ageist prejudice, particularly against the LGBTQI+ population. Adopting interdisciplinary, mixed-methods approaches, with a focus on lived experiences and the voices of older people across the globe, the book engages with key topics including access to healthcare, activism, community-building, politics and sex. Throughout embodied memories, the daily management of intimate life and avenues for further research are highlighted. Chapters demonstrate a wide range of needs, but also outstanding strategies of resistance, survival, joy and pride across the life course. They stir the reader’s scholarly, political and social imagination, fostering innovative ways to rethink ageing in the foreseeable future. A Research Agenda for Queer Ageing is a valuable resource for scholars and students of gender and queer studies, ageing, gerontology, psychology, human geography, sociology, anthropology and social work. It is also beneficial to policymakers interested in improving their understanding and inclusion of LGBTQI+ people.

 

Seidel, Katja, David Prendergast, and A. Jamie Saris. From Legacies to Futures: The Lifeworlds of Older Adults in Europe. 2025. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Series: Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations, vol. 11. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/SeidelFrom

 

Older adults want to exercise a sense of control over their relationships, structures and surroundings as they navigate the later life course. Through detailed ethnographic case studies, this book examines the dynamic lifeworlds of a hundred and seven community-dwelling older adults in Europe before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the importance of agency, the frictions between self-perceptions of age and outside impositions and the need to deconstruct old age as a homogenising category. These insights challenge simple narratives of older persons as social burdens by highlighting the complex roles they fill in family, neighbourhood and communities.

 

Shadrina, Anna. The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia. 2025. London: UCL Press. pp. 176. Open access (free PDF); print editions available. ISBN: 9781800089075. https://uclpress.co.uk/book/the-babushka-phenomenon/

 

The Babushka Phenomenon examines the social production of ageing in post-Soviet Russia, highlighting the role of grandmothers as primary caregivers due to men’s traditional estrangement from family life. This expectation places grandmothers, or babushkas, in a position where they prioritise childcare and housework over their careers, making them unpaid family carers reliant on the state and their children. Anna Shadrina situates older Russian women’s experiences within the post-Soviet redefinition of the nation, analysing their portrayal in popular media and biographical narratives of women aged 60 and over in Russia and the UK. It addresses class and racial disparities, noting how some women outsource family duties to less qualified women, and emphasises age as a significant but overlooked axis of social inequality. From a feminist perspective, the book explores citizenship as both a status and a practice of inclusion and exclusion. By focusing on older women’s rights to participate in private and public spheres, it discusses the new social inequalities that emerged after the USSR’s collapse. Despite prioritising others’ interests, older Russian women actively engage in economic citizenship, though their struggles for recognition are often excluded from formal economy and politics.

 

Shakuto, Shiori. After Work: Japanese Silver Backpackers in Malaysia. 2025. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 224. Price: $99.95 (Hardcover); $34.95 (Paperback; eBook). https://www.pennpress.org/9781512827088/after-work/

 

An ethnography of “silver backpackers” that offers a feminist perspective on what makes a good retirement in contemporary societies. The moniker “silver backpackers” refers to Japanese couples who, in their mid-fifties to seventies, move to Malaysia to enjoy their retirement. Recent scholarship on Japan has revealed how the gendered division of labor impacts the lives of middle-class workers and their families. But how do cultural values live on—or change—when these professionals retire from work, move on from identities built through salaried careers, and embark on a new phase of life? After Work takes up this question to focus on what comes after work, and in the process, expands our understanding of aging, gender, migration, and the future of work.

 

Shankardass, Mala Kapur, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Ageing Issues: Global and Country Narratives. 2025. Abingdon and New York: Routledge India. pp. 760. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Contemporary-Ageing-Issues-Global-and-Country-Narratives/Shankardass/p/book/9781032632292

 

This handbook provides a comprehensive look into the emerging issues confronting ageing societies across the world. Drawing on scholarship from Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe, it explores different dimensions of ageing, gender, health, environment, care, elder abuse, generational relationships, and grief. The volume adopts a gerontological perspective to evaluate ageing-specific policies and places emphasis on guiding research and practice towards achieving a better quality of life for older people across the world. It argues that new developments because of changing age structures, support ratios, family relationships and socioeconomic situations call for innovative practices, in terms of health and social care facilities, livelihood opportunities, retirement options, skill development and educational learning. Lucid and accessible, the handbook will be of interest to those working in gerontology, ageing, health, death studies, social care, public health policy, human rights law, sociology and social policy, gender studies, cultural studies, medical sociology, political sociology, mental health, and social sciences.

 

Showers, Fumilayo. Migrants Who Care: West Africans Working and Building Lives in U.S. Health Care. 2023. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. pp. 208. Price: $150.00 (Hardcover); $35.95 (Paperback; eBook).https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/migrants-who-care/9781978828988/

 

As the U.S. population ages and as health care needs become more complex, demand for paid care workers in home and institutional settings has increased. This book draws attention to the reserve of immigrant labor that is called on to meet this need. Migrants Who Care tells the little-known story of a group of English-speaking West African immigrants who have become central to the U.S. health and long-term care systems. With high human capital and middle-class pre-migration backgrounds, these immigrants - hailing from countries as diverse as Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, and Liberia - encounter blocked opportunities in the U.S. labor market. They then work in the United States, as home health aides, certified nursing assistants, qualified disability support professionals, and licensed practical and registered nurses.

 

Smith-Ruiz, Dorothy, Marcia J. Watson-Vandiver, and Debra C. Smith. Older African American Women: Systematic Racism, Health Disparities, and Caregiving Responsibilities. 2025. New York: Routledge. pp. 170. Series: Routledge Research in Race and Ethnicity https://www.routledge.com/Older-African-American-Women-Systematic-Racism-Health-Disparities-and-Caregiving-Responsibilities/Smith-Ruiz-Watson-Vandiver-Smith/p/book/9781032268699

 

African American women have disproportionally high prevalence, incidence, and mortality rates for most health conditions in comparison to White women. This book will explore some of the reasons for these disparities including problems within the health care system and societal institutions. The disproportionally high number of COVID-19 deaths in the African American population, especially among African American women, have brought renewed attention to historical racial inequality and the role it plays in the daily lives of American women and black families in general. Recommendations incorporate practical implications of this research including identifying social and financial supports unique to older African American women and determining strategies to strengthen the health needs of African American families, which is also paramount to addressing economic, social and racial disparities of this population.

 

Tang, Denise Tse-Shang. Everyday Erotics: Older Chinese Women and Same-Sex Desire. 2026. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Price: $103.95. ISBN: 978-1-4780-3368-4. https://www.dukeupress.edu/everyday-erotics

 

In Everyday Erotics, Denise Tse-Shang Tang explores the lives of older women with same-sex desire in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. Tang interviews women born in the 1930’s through the 1960’s, looking at how their lives differ across culture, class, and place, and how they lived and understood their own desires and social worlds. Through these tales of love, intimacy, family obligations, and personal respectability, she presents narrative accounts and analyses that complicate cultural notions of romance and desire at the intersections of gender roles, social class, and history. An ethnography grounded in inter-Asian cultural flows and connected histories, Everyday Erotics builds an archive of queer women’s lives and a genealogy of their experiences.

 

Wang, Xinyuan. Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China: From the Cultural to the Digital Revolution in Shanghai. 2023. London: UCL Press. pp. 312. Open access (free PDF); Price: $98.80 (Hardcover); $50.00 (Paperback). https://uclpress.co.uk/book/ageing-with-smartphones-in-urban-china/

 

If we want to understand contemporary China, the key is through understanding the older generation. This is the generation in China whose life courses almost perfectly synchronised with the emergence and growth of the ‘New China’ under the rule of the Communist Party (1949). People in their 70s and 80s have double the life expectancy of their parents’ generation. The current oldest generation in Shanghai was born in a time when the average household could not afford electric lights, but today they can turn their lights off via their smartphone apps.Based on 16-month ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Chinatackles the intersection between the ‘two revolutions’ experienced by the older generation in Shanghai: the contemporary smartphone-based digital revolution and the earlier communist revolutions. We find that we can only explain the smartphone revolution if we first appreciate the long-term consequences of these people’s experiences during the communist revolutions.

 

Wanka, Anna, and Anna Urbaniak, eds. Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Approaches in Ageing Research. 2023. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Open access (CC BY 4.0).https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-International-Handbook-of-Participatory-Approaches-in-Ageing-Research/Urbaniak-Wanka/p/book/9781032185002

 

This Handbook presents established and innovative perspectives on involving older adults as co-creators in ageing research. It reorients research and policy toward more inclusive and adequate designs that capture the voices and needs of older adults.

The Handbook: introduces types of participatory approaches in ageing research; highlights key methodological aspects of these approaches; gives insights from projects across different cultural contexts and academic disciplines, showing ways in which older participants can be involved in co-designing different stages of the research cycle; examines key issues to consider when involving older participants at each step of the research process; includes the voices of older adults directly; draws out conclusions and points ways forward for future research.

 

Ward, Richard, and Linn J. Sandberg, eds. Critical Dementia Studies: An Introduction. 2023. London: Routledge. Open access (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Series: Dementia in Critical Dialogue. https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Dementia-Studies-An-Introduction/Ward-Sandberg/p/book/9781032118833

 

This book puts the critical into dementia studies. It makes a timely and novel contribution to the field, offering a thought-provoking critique of current thinking and debate on dementia. Collectively the contributions gathered together in this text make a powerful case for a more politically engaged and critical treatment of dementia and the systems and structures that currently govern and frame it.The book is inter-disciplinary and draws together leading dementia scholars alongside dementia activists from around the world. It frames dementia as first and foremost a political category. The book advances both theoretical and methodological thinking in the field as well as sharing learning from empirical research. Outlining the limits to existing efforts to frame and theorise the condition, it proposes a new critical movement for the field of dementia studies and practice.

 

Willis, Paul, Ilkka Pietilä, and Marjaana Seppänen, eds. Ageing, Men and Social Relations: New Perspectives on Masculinities and Men's Social Connections in Later Life. 2023. Bristol: Policy Press. pp. 233. Series: Ageing in a Global Context. https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/ageing-men-and-social-relations

 

While there has been a gradual increase in scholarship on men, ageing and masculinities, little attention has been paid to the social relations of men in later life and the implications for enhancing their social wellbeing and counteracting ageist discourse. Bringing together scholars in social gerontology and the social sciences from across Global North and South nations, this collection fills the gaps in key texts by foregrounding older men’s experiences. It provides new perspectives across the intersections of old age, ethnicities, class and sexual and gender identity, paying particular attention to older men from seldom heard or marginalised groups.