Care in Interaction: Aging, Personhood, and Meaningful Decline
SMC Affiliated Work
1
Status
Faculty
School
School of Liberal Arts
Department
Anthropology
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-21-2020
Publication / Conference / Sponsorship
Medical Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in Health and Illness
Description/Abstract
Care, as it is instantiated through interaction, can both perform and shape cultural and moral understandings of what it means to be a person in the world. American Catholic nuns have been found to age more “successfully” than their peers. However, in contrast to the successful aging paradigm, an analysis of care interactions from research conducted in a Franciscan Catholic convent in the Midwestern United States reveals that the nuns practice an ideal of meaningful decline. I explore how linguistic analysis of care interactions evidence ideologies of personhood and aging, and how a model of meaningful decline (the notion that valuable personhood endures beyond productivity) is instantiated through interaction.
Scholarly
yes
Peer Reviewed
1
DOI
10.1080/01459740.2019.1705297
Disciplines
Anthropology
Original Citation
Corwin, Anna. Jan 2020. “Care in Interaction: Aging, Personhood, and Meaningful Decline.” Medical Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in Health and Illness. doi:10.1080/01459740.2019.1705297.
Repository Citation
Corwin, Anna I.. Care in Interaction: Aging, Personhood, and Meaningful Decline (2020). Medical Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in Health and Illness. 10.1080/01459740.2019.1705297 [article]. https://digitalcommons.stmarys-ca.edu/school-liberal-arts-faculty-works/3143
