CART: 0 item(s) $0.00Learning to Be Old: Gender, Culture, and Aging
Second Edition
| By Margaret Cruikshank |
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Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. | |||||||||||||||||
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"Praise for the first edition:
In her excellent book, Learning to Be Old, Margaret Cruikshank compares the aged to a 'colonized people', suggesting that ageism goes beyond dehumanization into actual scapegoating of the old."— New York Times Magazine
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What does it mean to grow old in America today? Is "successful aging" our responsibility? What will happen if we fail to "grow old gracefully"? Especially for women, the onus on the aging population in the United States is growing rather than diminishing. Gender, race, and sexual orientation have been reinterpreted as socially constructed phenomena, yet aging is still seen through physically constructed lenses. The second edition of Margaret Cruikshank's Learning to Be Old helps put aging in a new light, neither romanticizing nor demonizing it. Featuring new research and analysis, expanded sections on gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender aging and critical gerontology, and an updated chapter on feminist gerontology, the second edition even more thoroughly than the first looks at the variety of different forces affecting the progress of aging. Cruikshank pays special attention to the fears and taboos, multicultural traditions, and the medicalization and politicization of natural processes that inform our understanding of age. Through it all, we learn a better way to inhabit our age whatever it is.
Special Features:
Beautifully written and jargon free
Creative and original
Crosses several disciplines
Debunks many of the aging myths perpetuated by the media
Provides an alternative to the "medical model" of aging
Considers the varying cultural perceptions of aging and the elderly within the United States
Offers a positive reconstruction of aging that defies sexism, ageism, racism, and class bias
About the Author
Margaret Cruikshank is lecturer in women's studies and faculty associate of the Center on Aging at the University of Maine.