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Title

Christiane Brosius co-editor of volume on care and ageing

Date:

Date: 

14 June 2021

Many societies are experiencing growing longevity and population ageing simultaneously with increasing urbanization and mobility. Such fundamental demographic and structural shifts are reflected in a multitude of narratives and strategies on how to "age well" in view of rapidly transforming environments, increased people mobility, and changing social relations. These developments are also playing a significant role in current political discourses on securing care provision. Yet, the perspective of countries outside the group of nations leading the global list of ageing pyramids has not been widely addressed; this is the case of South Asia, which has relatively young populations as compared to other "greying" Asian countries, although the percentage of ageing individuals is increasing at an accelerating speed. Hence, the need to rethink notions and experiences of ageing from multiple angles.

The volume "
Caring for Old Age: Perspectives from South Asia," co-edited by
Prof. Christiane Brosius (HCTS –
Visual and Media Anthropology) and HCTS doctoral candidate
Roberta Mandoki, is an attempt to expand our understanding of ageing and caring communities through the lens of transcultural phenomena such as spatiality, mobility, and narrativity. The transcultural dimension of ageing and care is explored through ten ethnographic and literary case studies from South Asia, plus one Europe-based case study from a South Asian researcher’s view. By focusing on old age and related vernacular discourses on place and space from South Asia, and by critically engaging with dominant Eurocentric discourses in ageing studies, the contributions in this volume shed light on transcultural entanglements and translocal experiences in care and ageing with respect to the South Asian context.

The book brings together the innovative paradigms developed during the workshop "New Approaches to Ageing in South Asia and Europe," which took place in 2015 at the Goethe-Institut Indien in New Delhi, and in the frame of the interdisciplinary research project "
Ageing in a Transcultural Context" (2013–16) at the former
Cluster "Asia and Europe in a Global Context."

The volume is part of the series
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality
in Heidelberg University’s publishing branch,
heiUP. The series is committed to publishing research that investigates the dynamics of transcultural relationships in any region of the globe and includes works positioned both within and across disciplines. Visit
here to access and download the volume "Caring for Old Age: Perspectives from South Asia," and
here to access all the titles in the series.

To contact the editorial team, please write at
tr-editors@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de. Submissions are welcome in any of the following areas: anthropology, art history, cultural and religious studies, politics, literary studies, media and communication, musicology, and public health.