No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The tremendous cultural diversity in aging and becoming aged presents challenges to the serious scholar and student of aging. How to make sense of the almost infinite, and inherently interesting, variation is a question that has only recently been addressed. Two edited volumes contribute to our progress in this area, although their stated aims and scope are quite different as are their results.
Aging in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Africa and the Americas is the outgrowth of a 1987 conference of the same name, sponsored by the Anson Phelps Stokes Institute for African, Afro-American and American Indian Affairs. Researchers were invited to "discuss sociocultural aspects of aging among populations sharing a common African heritage in the United States, Latin America, and Africa" (p. v). With that topical theme, this book seemed to hold promise of filling a gap in existing gerontological collections. Gort's introductory essay narrows the geographical limits to West Africa, Brazil, and North America. It also establishes, as the key conference question, whether the modernization theory of aging can explain the status and role of black elderly in these societies.
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