TY  - BOOK
AU  - Leibing,Annette
AU  - Cohen,Lawrence
TI  - Thinking About Dementia: Culture, Loss, and the Anthropology of Senility 
SN  - 9780813538020
PB  - Rutgers University Press
KW  - Social Science / Anthropology
KW  - bisacsh
KW  - Social sciences
KW  - Electronic books
N1  - Access copy available to the general public
N2  - Bringing together essays by nineteen respected scholars, this volume approaches dementia from a variety of angles, exploring its historical, psychological, and philosophical implications. The authors employ a cross-cultural perspective that is based on ethnographic fieldwork and focuses on questions of age, mind, voice, self, loss, temporality, memory, and affect.    Taken together, the essays make four important and interrelated contributions to our understanding of the mental status of the elderly. First, cross-cultural data show that the aging process, while biologically influenced, is also culturally constructed. Second, ethnographic reports raise questions about the diagnostic criteria used for defining the elderly as demented. Third, case studies show how a diagnosis affects a patient's treatment in both clinical and familial settings. Finally, the collection highlights the gap that separates current biological understandings of aging from its cultural meanings
UR  - https://openresearchlibrary.org/content/9306d547-3857-4a19-8b7a-37f253bc0567
ER  -