Successful aging as a contemporary obsession: global perspectives

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Successful Aging as a Twenty-first- Century Obsession / Lamb, Sarah / Robbins-Ruszkowski, Jessica / Corwin, Anna I. -- PART I. Gender, Sexuality, and the Allure of Anti-Aging -- 1. Successful Aging, Ageism, and the Maintenance of Age and Gender Relations / Calasanti, Toni / King, Neal -- 2. Opting In or Opting Out? North American Women Share Strategies for Aging Successfully with (and without) Cosmetic Intervention / Brooks, Abigail T. -- 3. Aging Out: Ageism, Heterosexism, and Racism among Aging African American Lesbians and Gay Men / Woody, Imani -- 4. Erectile Dysfunction as Successful Aging in Mexico / Wentzell, Emily -- PART II. Ideals of Independence, Interdependence, and Intimate Sociality in Later Life -- 5. Beyond Independence: Older Chicagoans Living Valued Lives / Buch, Elana D. -- 6. Growing Old with God: An Alternative Vision of Successful Aging among Catholic Nuns / Corwin, Anna I. -- 7. Aspiring to Activity: Universities of the Third Age, Gardening, and Other Forms of Living in Postsocialist Poland / Robbins-Ruszkowski, Jessica -- 8. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot? Friendship in the Face of Dementia / Taylor, Janelle S. -- PART III. National Policies and Everyday Practices: Individual and Collective Projects of Aging Well -- 9. Getting Old and Keeping Going: The Motivation Technologies of Active Aging in Denmark / Lassen, Aske Juul / Pernille Jespersen, Astrid -- 10. Foolish Vitality: Humor, Risk, and Success in Japan / Danely, Jason -- 11. Nurturing Life in Contemporary Beijing / Farquhar, Judith / Zhang, Qicheng -- 12. Depreciating Age, Disintegrating Ties: On Being Old in a Century of Declining Elderhood in Kenya / Mcintosh, Janet -- PART IV. Medicine, Morality, and Self: Lessons from Life's Ends -- 13. Successful Selves? Heroic Tales of Alzheimer's Disease and Personhood in Brazil / Leibing, Annette -- 14. Comfortable Aging: Lessons for Living from Eighty-five and Beyond / Loe, Meika -- 15. Ageless Aging or Meaningful Decline? Aspirations of Aging and Dying in the United States and India / Lamb, Sarah -- Epilogue: Successful Aging and Desired Interdependence / Reynolds Whyte, Susan -- Notes on Contributors -- Index

Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession exposes and complicates contemporary readings of successful aging, questioning and defamiliarizing Western visions of the place of old age in the life course. This volume brings fresh insight and international perspectives that expand our collective imagination about what it is to age, and, by extension, to live