TY - BOOK AU - Cohen,Lawrence AU - Leibing,Annette ED - Project Muse. TI - Thinking About Dementia : : Culture, Loss, and the Anthropology of Senility / T2 - Studies in medical anthropology SN - 9780813539270 PY - 2006/// CY - New Brunswick, N.J. PB - Rutgers University Press KW - Public health KW - Anthropological aspects KW - fast KW - Medical anthropology KW - Dementia KW - Alzheimer's disease KW - MEDICAL KW - General KW - bisacsh KW - SOCIAL SCIENCE KW - Anthropology KW - Popular Culture KW - POLITICAL SCIENCE KW - Public Policy KW - Cultural Policy KW - Cultural KW - elderly KW - aat KW - anthropology KW - Personnes âgees KW - Anthropologie KW - Sante publique KW - Aspect anthropologique KW - Maladie d'Alzheimer KW - Demence KW - Aged, 80 and over KW - Alzheimer Disease KW - Clinical Medicine KW - methods KW - psychology KW - Aged KW - Older people KW - Electronic books. KW - local N1 - Dementia-near-death and "life itself" / Sharon R. Kaufman -- The borderlands of primary care : physician and family perspectives on "troublesome" behaviors of people with dementia / Ladson Hinton [and others] -- Negotiating the moral status of trouble : the experiences of forgetful individuals diagnosed with no dementia / Andre P. Smith -- Diagnosing dementia : epidemiological and clinical data as cultural text / Janice E. Graham -- The biomedical deconstruction of senility and the persistent stigmatization of old age in the United States / Jesse F. Ballenger -- Genetic susceptibility and Alzheimer's disease : the penetrance and uptake of genetic knowledge / Margaret Lock, Stephanie Lloyd, and Janalyn Prest -- Coherence without facticity in dementia : the case of Mrs. Fine / Athena Helen McLean -- Creative storytelling and self-expression among people with dementia / Anne Davis Basting -- Embodied selfhood : an ethnographic exploration of Alzheimer's disease / Pia C. Kontos -- Normality and difference : institutional classification and the constitution of subjectivity in a Dutch nursing home / Roma Chatterji -- Divided gazes : Alzheimer's disease, the person within, and death in life / Annette Leibing -- Being a good rōjin : senility, power, and self-actualization in Japan / John W. Traphagan; Open Access N2 - Cultural responses to most illnesses differ; dementia is no exception. These responses, together with a society's attitudes toward its elderly population, affect the frequency of dementia-related diagnoses and the nature of treatment. Bringing together essays by nineteen respected scholars, this unique volume approaches the subject from a variety of angles, exploring the historical, psychological, and philosophical implications of dementia. Based on solid ethnographic fieldwork, the essays employ a cross-cultural perspective and focus 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 the extent to which the aging process, while biologically influenced, is also very much culturally constructed. Second, detailed ethnographic reports raise questions about the behavioral criteria used by health care professionals and laymen 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. As Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia continue to command an ever-increasing amount of attention in medicine and psychology, this book will be essential reading for anthropologists, social scientists, and health care professionals UR - https://muse.jhu.edu/book/17686/ ER -