B19 Aging in a transcultural context
Aging in a transcultural context
Coordination: Christiane Brosius , Axel Michaels, Andreas Kruse
Abstract
Elderly Woman practicing Yoga.
Image courtesy of Ambro /
FreeDigitalPhotos.net
This interdisciplinary research group - coordinated by Christiane Brosius
(Visual and Media Anthropology, KJC), Axel Michaels (Indology, SAI) and Andreas
Kruse (Gerontology, Institute of Gerontology) - focuses on aging in a
transcultural urban context.
Asia witnesses drastic demographic dynamics
and asymmetries in the structures of aging. As longevity and urbanisation are
simultaneously on the rise there is a strong need for urban ethnography that
captures the experience of aging within cities. The research group sets out to
reflect the transcultural entanglements that take place as Euro-American
concepts of generation, family, age and aging have travelled to India and the
other way around. Transcultural entanglements are a rich repository to examine -
and further challenge - the often proclaimed view that with "modernization" and
"westernization" the respect for old people has vanished and multigenerational
household or joint families allegedly have eroded. Far from being deteriorated,
the generations have taken new steps to renegotiate and invest in the
intergenerational contract. Notions such as "global", "modern" or "Western" are
both embraced and rejected, depending on the context.
To gain new insights into the imagination of aging in a transcultural context media
representations as repositories of narratives and representations, sounding
boards and catalysts of social change and geronto-imaginaries will play a
crucial role in the subprojects. Media imaginaries are arguably the most
prominent signifier of what appears to be a globalizing narrative of aging. At
the same time, careful analysis of a wide range of media cultures across
disciplinary boundaries calls for a more differentiated understanding when
mainstream representations and narratives of aging are juxtaposed against their
trans/local reception, and studied through a necessary transmediality of
hitherto marginalised media texts and sources in diverse formats of film,
television soaps, magazines, advertisement or online media channels.
These objectives allow the researchers to capture discrepant experience
of aging between highly dynamic social imaginaries and mobility on the one hand
and relatively slowly changing inter-generational discourses and narratives, on
the other. The research group will therefore employ the tools of critical media
anthropology and ethnography to study how globalizing scripts of generativity
need to be critiqued or adapted under the conditions of the developmental
states, high-speed urbanisation and transitioning consumer societies of (South)
Asia. One of the key foci will be India's capital Delhi, another the urbanizing
region of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal.