Taking Into Account These Different Forms Of Understanding Aging And Their Merging Through Globalization

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Abstract

This study explores how South Asian Indian Gujarati older adults in Canada (Greater Vancouver area) strive to maintain personal continuity, citizenship, and selfhood through everyday body management practices (exercise/yoga, medication/health supplements, skin, and hair care routines) and cultural markers such as food, sartorial choices, and community engagement. This examination, we contend, is noteworthy against the backdrop of contemporary North American academic and popular discourses of a burgeoning consumerist movement around the medicalization of bodies and anti-aging technologies. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews of 26 older adults, we discuss how growing old in the diaspora are marked with moral ambivalence between successful aging' and 'aging gracefully.' Based on an inductive thematic analysis, we identify four major themes in how the older diaspora negotiate to age and reorganize their lives through changing social relations and shifting cultural institutions. cistanche penis growth The first theme is the growing salience of both bodily and social changes in conceptualizing "old age," and how the experiences of aging vary by gender. Specifically, while most of the female participants visualized old age in terms of a loss of physical functionality, the male participants described agedness in terms of a loss of economic and social worth. The second major theme encapsulates the acceptable coping strategies for dealing with bodily changes and the associated reconfigurations of social roles. While a fit body and functionality were regarded as foundational traits for aging well by all participants, corrective measures or anti-aging products were not espoused as the most culturally appropriate "Indian" way of growing old. The third theme highlights the apprehensions regarding growing old in a foreign country, including foreboding anxiety of dependence and frailty in the absence of traditional familial care networks. The final theme explores how for most participants, the notion of home evoked ambivalence in constructing their sense of belonging and identity, often expressed through everyday practices and memory-keeping. Taken together, we ultimately show how age and embodiment are inextricably linked in the experience of growing old in the diaspora.

Keywords: Diaspora; embodied aging; body practices; later life identities; India

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Introduction

Led by the"successful"(Rowe and Kahn 1987) and "active" aging (United Nations 2002) paradigms, there has been a growing emphasis on individualism, positive affect, body image, and personal control over late-life outcomes in Western industrialized countries. The socio-political expectations around growing old have moved away from framing aging as a natural process of decline to a more medical, preventive paradigm, characterized by the belief in physical and cognitive plasticity. These ideologies share the assumption that not only is there a general potential to positively influence the aging process, but there is also an individual responsibility to do so (Davey and Glasgow 2006). The expectation to take responsibility for aging well through (bodily) self-control is stronger for women (Moore 2008). Research in Western industrialized countries has also demonstrated that femininity is inextricably linked to a youthful, healthy, and fit-looking body (Carter 2016; Slevin 2006) and to a rejection of old age as an illness, that needs to be contained, controlled, and corrected (Bordo 1993; Brooks 2010; Furman 1997; Smirnova 2012).In contrast, growing old in India has often been culturally associated with an"appropriate dependence"1 (Lamb 2013, 172), reduced physical capabilities, and a socially-expected withdrawal from pleasure, sociality, and material possessions (Lamb 2014). Lawrence Cohen, in his anthropological classic, No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, the Bad Family and Other Modern Things, argues that "old age in India is organized around an imminent 'problem of aging'- more old people and less desire and ability to take care of them... [such that] the language of gerontology (in India) is alarmist, often apocalyptic"(Cohen 1998,89). cistanche salsa benefits While this sentiment dominated Indian gerontology for a considerable period of time (and still continues to govern questions of economic security and healthcare among the aged), there is a slow and steady shift in the gerontological intellectual gaze (Lamb,2000,2013,2014; Samanta 2018). Arguably, the neo-liberal market has slowly ushered in a new-age experience of growing old among the middle class in India where a consumption-based retirement lifestyle can be purchased without a loss of a productive and vital self.?

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Taking into account these different forms of understanding aging and their merging through globalization we examine the resultant cultural tensions in aging by looking at the social experience of growing old among the South Asian Indian Gujarati diaspora in Canada. We attempt to understand how older adults in the diaspora navigate rapidly shifting realities of globalization and the multiple imaginations of home and feelings of nostalgia as they strive to maintain personal continuity, identity, and selfhood through everyday practices. To accomplish this, we address three interrelated research questions on the embodied experience of growing old in the diaspora. Our use of the term embodiment draws on the post-structural, phenomenological approach that allows one to make and remake their body through routinization of practices(Csordas1999; Turner 1995). First, we ask how does the older South Asian Indian Gujarati diaspora perceive and experience aging? Second, what coping mechanisms do they employ to navigate changes in later life? Finally, how are later life identities shaped and reshaped in a transnational context? In what follows, we mine the sociological and gerontological scholarship (both theoretical and empirical) on the intersections of the body, consumerism, and aging whilst also paying attention to the literature on diaspora.

Literature Review

While aging, in general, is seen as a degenerative process leading to loss of physical vitality and cognitive abilities, this perspective on aging is especially damaging for women. Women's worth is inevitably related to their appearances, specifically their ability to embody youthful beauty ideals (Sontag 1972; Wolf 1991)."Being physically attractive," Susan Sontag (1972) asserts, "counts more in a woman's life than in a man's, but beauty, identified, as it is for women, with youthfulness, does not stand up well to age”(31). cistanche tubulosa dosage reddit The “bio-medicalization of aging”(Estes and Binney 19)and the cosmeceutical lens have further demonized the aging body; now, aging is perceived as a pathological condition, a disease that needs to be managed, or a problem that needs to be solved (Clarke et al.2003; Conard 2007; Katz 1996). In a similar vein, anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh (2015) highlights the emphasis that American society places on containing and correcting fat bodies, a phenomenon that equally reflects how the social responsibility of becoming good citizens rests singularly on individuals. Michelle Hannah Smirnova (2012) in her content and discourse analysis of magazine advertisements in the United States, argues that cosmeceuticals are positioned as drugs that assist with the curing, containing, or modifying of the disease of aging. She further asserts that the success of the cosmeceutical turn in the anti-aging enterprise is brought about by the increasing commodification of medicine coupled with the medical"life-extension project," which she defines as a"combination of technologies, knowledge, and practices directed at the aging body which seek to prolong life through all available means (based on self-surveillance and preventative behaviors), and the consumption fields of cosmetic surgery"(1237).

More generally, studies show how science, medicine, and consumer culture negotiate the 'acceptable appearance of aging through the prescription of various regimens of aesthetic maintenance (Bayer 2005) for the aging woman. The aging woman is portrayed to be able to recuperate an acceptable identity only through particular modes of consumption (LQavis 1995; Holstein 2006; Hurd Clarke 2011). In a renewed interrogation of the"cultural turn," JuliaTwigg and Wendy Martin (2015) contend that the body has become the key site for the operation of new kinds of"governmentality" (Foucault 1991). Older bodies are increasingly subjected to discipline by various regimes of fitness and health (Slevin 2008; Slevin and Mowery 2012). It is worth noting that while women's bodies are more likely to be subject to social surveillance, men's bodies and social roles in later life have received marginal attention in gender scholarship. While there is no denying that the majority of men in most societies benefit from institutionalized forms of patriarchal privilege, the heterogeneity of that experience is worth investigating. As such, masculinity studies informed by critical theory note how gender practices and age relations form critical axes of inequality where the social category of male seniors is collectively viewed as degendered or genderless (Thompsola, Jr 2019). This, in turn, homogenizes the vast differences among mature men and blurs older men's distinctive and varied subjectivities.

Appearance, as noted above, is an important dimension of embodiment, specifically for the performance of age, gender, and identity (Calasanti and Slevin 2001; Furman,1997). Older women are expected to engage in numerous forms of beauty work such as the use of hair dye, dieting, exercise, make-up, and non-surgical and surgical procedures in order to approximate youthful body ideals and arrest agedness (Furman 1997; Hurd Clarke andKorotchenko 2010). While some scholars such as Sandra L. Bartky (1997) view engagement in such practices as unquestioned submission to the patriarchal demands on the body, others have suggested that body practices may not always be oppressive but rather may be integral to building older women's self-esteem and identity and fighting body dissatisfaction in later life(Carter 2016; see also Bordo 1995; Fraser 2003; Gange and McGaughey 2002; Heywood and Drake 1997). Susan Bordo (1995), for example, sees body correction as a means by which individuals may reclaim control over their bodies and their embodied selves.

Aging across cultures: Social roles and identity formation among older immigrants Several studies have explored age-related changes in social roles and values in a variety of cultural contexts. For instance, in their recent study of rural Tanzanian older women, Sylvia Karen Rutagumirwa and Ajay Bailey (2017) found that aging led to a shift in familial responsibilities and status. Tae-Ock Kauh (1999) found that older Korean American adults in Philadelphia experienced a loss of social status and power in their families. The participants in Sabrina T Wong, ' Grace I Yoo and Anita L Stewart's (2006) study of older Chinese and Korean immigrants in the United States reported feelings of both concern and relief with their participants, as they became peripheral members of the family, lost familial authority and became more independent as they age.

In her discussion of aging Baby Boomers, Naomi Woodspring (2016) argues that social identities are carefully crafted through adaptations in appearance, roles, and health. Likewise, Margaret Gullette (1997) discounts the idea of a core, singular, master identity and espouses the possibility of multiple, shifting identities that are contingent upon cultural beliefs, values, and practices. cistanche แอ ม เว ย์ She places to age in the center of the social construction of identity. Sociologist Richard Jenkins offers yet another useful conceptual entry point in understanding the contestations around the idea of identity. Jenkins (2010)furthers the theory of multiple, integrated, relational identities by making embodiment the focal point of analysis. In fact, in his later analysis, social identity is considered as a"process-identification-not a thing" (Jenkins 2010, 5), opening up the avenue to explore the continuous process of negotiations through which identities are shaped and reshaped in later life. Noteworthy in this regard is the work of Finnish sociologist, Lena Nare (2017), who points out that the Gujaratis who live in North London still continue to have ties with not only India but also with the East African nations of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, countries from which they had emigrated to the UK. Nare observes how 'home' often holds ambivalent references to multiple geographic sites. For example, for Nare's participant, the idea of home encompassed the everydayness lived in North London interspersed with the occasional escapes to extended family or too nostalgic memories of a childhood spent in India and/or East Africa.

Finally, although there is a growing body of gerontological scholarship in South Asia, discussion of the crucial link between culture and aging is often neglected. While the aging mind has received some attention through the articulations of cultural anthropologists (see, for example, Brijnath 2014 and Cohen 1998), few studies have considered the cultural construction of aging bodies in the Indian context (exceptions include Lamb 2000,2002a,2002b,2014; Samanta 2018). It is this lack that we seek to address by drawing attention to the salience of the body and everyday body practices in shaping the understanding of old age and later life identities in a transnational context.

Conceptual Framework: Body Practices and Embodiment

We adopt a post-structural and cultural gerontological lens to understand the interconnected notions of body and identity in later life. In the poststructuralist school of thought, the body is seen as transcending its natural or biological existence and categorization to give way to culturally inscribed meanings and identities (Alcoff 1988; Bartky 1997; Butler 2004; Foucault 1978). The body is thereby considered both a product as well as an agent; both the embodied subject and the culture are produced, sustained, reproduced, and changed simultaneously through dynamic social interactions. Feminist poststructuralists often focus on everyday body practices and their relation to subjectivity, performativity, and the disciplinary demands of normative feminity.

Sociological scholarship concerning body culture and body image has primarily focused on the younger population (particularly, younger and middle-aged women), while a growing yet still relatively limited number of studies have considered aging bodies. The recent cultural turn in gerontology (Gilleard and Higgs 2005; Twigg and lMartin 2015)has brought the body and embodiment to the forefront in gerontological discourses. Juliia Twigg and Wendy Martin (2015) suggest that developments in cultural gerontology have re-emphasized and reconfigured the meanings associated with aging. With its emphasis on agency, live experiences, and the individuality of older adults, cultural gerontology has reconceptualized identities as plastic with the possibility of being made and remade through life choices, values, judgments, and discourses. how much cistanche to take Seen this way, a cultural gerontological framework privileges the relational aspects of later life identities and the embodied experience of aging. For example, while arguing how clothing is age-ordered, Julia Twigg (2018)shows that the choice and presentation of clothing have a mediating, performative dimension thus bringing bodies, clothing, and culture together.

Our post-structural understanding of the socialized body allows us to appreciate the social construction of the disciplinary gaze(Foucault 1979)where the individual becomes her/his own agent of surveillance and conforms to the normative constraints of the lived context. We do this by analyzing everyday body management practices (e.g., exercise, yoga, diet, medication/health supplements, and skin and hair care routines) as well as identity-making cultural markers(e.g., food and sartorial choices, social interactions, and community engagement) among older Indians in the diaspora.

Method and Data

The study was supported by a doctoral fellowship from the Shastri-Indo Canadian Institute (2017-2018)awarded to the first author. Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Review Boards of both the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, and the University of British Columbia.

Study design

Between August and November2017,26 older adults aged 55 years and above(13males and 13 females)were interviewed by the first author. The participants were recruited using snowball sampling methods and with the help of a gatekeeper who was a well-connected member of the Gujarati immigrant community in the Greater Vancouver region where most of the Indian immigrants in British Columbia reside. The semi-structured interviews explored the meanings that people assigned to old age and the strategies they adopted to cope with the age-related physical and social changes. As such, participants were asked whether they considered themselves old and about their perceptions and apprehensions regarding aging and the physiological and social changes they observed over time. Interviews lasted between 40 minutes to 3 hours and were conducted in a variety of locations, including public places like restaurants and parks as well as respondents' homes and workplaces. Twenty interviews were tape-recorded while six interviews, where the participants expressed reservations about recording the interview, were noted down by the interviewer. All of them used a combination of English, Hindi, and Gujarati to communicate with the first author. Gujarati and Hindi portions of the interviews were translated after transcribing the audio verbatim. The first author took field notes about her observations of the surroundings and the body language of the participants, which were used to build further insights into the narratives.

Study participants

All the participants were of Gujarati Hindu origin and had been living in Canada for ten years or more.4 They had a varied migration history³∶10 were former political refugees who had migrated in the early 1970s to escape the political unrest in Africa,12 were first-generation labor migrants, and 4 were zero generation' migrants who had followed their migrant children in later life. Although a sociological categorization of class (especially, the Indian middle class) remains conceptually contested and empirically ambiguous (see, for example, Fernandes 2006; Mazzarella 20116), for the purpose of our study, we defined social class positions based on visible economic markers such as property and car ownership, (independent) living arrangements, and socio-cultural distinctions such as English language proficiency, club memberships, social networks, and finally, self-perceptions of their social class. By this classification, all our respondents belonged to the middle class. All but one female participant, who had moved to a rental apartment following her husband's death, owned their own houses. With the exception of six participants who lived with their adult children, one woman who lived with her mother as she was the sole care provider, and one man whose parents co-resided with his family, the majority of them either lived alone with their spouses. Table 1 presents descriptive information about the sample.

Analysis

The data were analyzed thematically following previous work on reflexive thematic analysis in qualitative research (see Braun & Clarke 2006; Terry, Hayfield, Clarke & Braun 2017). After reading through the texts of all interview transcripts, tentative categories were assigned by the first author to the perceptions and narratives of the participants. These categories helped in identifying common themes that emerged from the narratives. The themes were decided in consultation with her third author, Dr. Samanta, who also re-read the transcribed interview material. Our analysis resulted in four overlapping themes which highlight how older adults perceive, experience, and cope with their aging bodies and how they negotiate their identities in later life through everyday practices. All names have been changed to protect the privacy of the participants.

Changing bodies, changing roles: Gendered associations

Most of the participants described old age in terms of changes to their physical bodies and social roles. They primarily used two parameters to map these changes in their bodies, namely physical appearance and functionality. While most of them expressed a sense of loss because of corporeal changes (e.g., loss of thicker hair and slimmer body), they also conveyed feelings of resigned acceptance of these bodily changes. For instance, Nirmala (65), who had immigrated to Canada post-marriage, said that though she was not happy with her weight gain and thinning hair, it was important to accept these inevitable changes:

... Obviously, you are not as young as you were ten years back... When I was 5, I think I was more athletic. Now... sometimes I really feel that pain can do that much damage...So, then I said, "oh wow! maybe I am aging." And then obviously your body structure changes as well after a certain age. As I said if I would have kept up walking and doing my own exercises it wouldn't have bothered me. But yes, it does now... Yeah, you get a little slow, slow in work...You lose your hair so naturally, I notice that it's getting thinner. I used to have very thick hair and obviously, it got a little lighter here so I said, "Wow it shows"... (But)I should always love myself no matter what, it's still me right!"

Another common vector that emerged during discussions about the meaning of old age was the experience of compromised body functionality. Echoing the sentiments of many respondents, Sangeeta (65), born and raised in Canada, shared:

I am aging, that's for sure. I can't refute that. It is happening...I am 65, but I won't say I am old. I am still able to function, you know. When I reach a certain age and all these things slow down and when I can't look after myself, do my own things myself..that will be old. I don't know when that will happen. I hope not too soon.

Although Sangeeta acknowledged changes in her body, she did not feel she was old yet because, for her, old age would mean diminished body functionality. Unsurprisingly, while most of our female respondents described old age in terms of their bodily changes, most of the older males defined aging in terms of changes in their professional and/or social roles. For instance, Dilip (82) reported how his social roles had changed over the years. While he had remained actively engaged in his family business in Canada until a couple of years ago, he lamented how age had slowed him down:

Well, it's (role) has changed in the last 5 years... Change in role includes, when I started getting older, I gave almost everything to my son, like my savings, the house...He was really young when I bought this house. Now I have added his name (to the ownership document)...If we both (he and his wife) pass away, then he should not face any legal or accounting problems.

Articulating the sense that his social value had diminished, Dilip expressed his discontent with his changing role and status in his social circle:

... When younger boys (men) come(to social gatherings) they get honored. I have grown old now, so no one even wants to talk to me... people will just come and say "hello/ hi" and nothing much..before they used to discuss..." we have to do this, we have to do that"...because I was in a voluntary society for almost 15 years. Now no one discusses it with me.

A majority of the participants (20 out of 26) expressed unhappiness at the prospect of changing social roles and status with advancing age. While five men and women expressed that they enjoyed the reduced social responsibilities, one older woman felt there had been no change in her social role with age. Sushma (77), who resided with her extended family (spouse, adult son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren), felt that she had more time for herself after her parental and grandparental responsibilities eased with age. She mused:

Growing old, no change as such. Everything is like before. Now I do not work that much. My daughter-in-law helps more in the kitchen. She comes home early, and we cook dinner together...Also, grandchildren are all out (in college)so not much work is there...I like it. I can nap in the afternoon...Earlier, I would be busy with chores...

The interview excerpts above reflect the participants’ feelings of ambivalence about the inevitability of age-related physical and social changes. While a yearning to hold on to the permanence of an enduring lifestyle and life status was the common refrain, there were also exceptions undergirding the heterogeneity and hybridity (Lowe 2005) of the diasporic experience.

This article is extracted from Vol 42 No 2 (2021) ISSN 2374-2267 (online) DOI 10.5195/aa.2021.304 http://anthro-age.pitt.edu