Introduction

The theme of the 2006 annual scientific meeting of the British Society of Gerontology held at the University of Wales in Bangor was the “Ageing Jigsaw.” This topic invited participants to explore interdisciplinary approaches in understanding issues pertinent to old age. This paper is an adaptation of a keynote address I gave at the conference. Anthropology is but one of the many disciplines engaged in unraveling the mysteries of ageing. The intent of this essay is to share the promise and actuality of an anthropology of ageing. First, we will examine how anthropology has infiltrated gerontology and has come to make major contributions to our knowledge of ageing and the experiences of growing old. Secondly, we will explore some of these discoveries through a number of riddles as fitting the theme of the conference – gerontology as a puzzle of disciplines. Here I explicitly borrow from the title of an edited book by Paul Spencer of the University of London, Anthropology and the Riddle of the Sphinx (1990) which focuses on the life course.

Disciplines do have a national character. The U.K. is a homeland of anthropology, From the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century British Social Anthropology evolved into one of the most distinctive and powerful schools of anthropology. Under the twin fathers of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown a discipline was founded as a science of society. Although the world has changed and the questions have changed, British Social Anthropology has laid the foundations for the anthropologies of the late 20th century and early 21st century. American Anthropology differs from anthropology as it is conceived in Europe. First it is organized differently and is much broader. Most anthropology departments integrate four fields into one discipline. These are biological anthropology, archaeology, anthropological linguistics and sociocultural anthropology. Secondly, in the U. S. there is more emphasis on culture and meaning and less on society.

When gerontology emerged in the 1940’s in the U.S. with the creation of the Gerontological Society, the emphasis was decidedly biological and medical. However, the vision of gerontology at the time was that ageing was a phenomenon that could only be understood through the contributions of many disciplines. Anthropology was there at the creation. Leo Simmons, a sociologist at Yale, brought the comparative perspective of anthropology to gerontology in his book The Role of the Aged in Primitive Society (1945). He used an anthropological resource in the Human Relation Area Files. These files take existing ethnographies and code them into topics including several relating to ageing. Simmons documents issues such as the power of elders, abandonment and killing of old people and the role older people play in simpler societies. Simmons also draws upon his experiences on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona.

It was not until the late 1960’s that anthropology fully embraced gerontology and began to diversify. Margaret Clark and Barbara Anderson investigated mental health and the effects of cultural values in adjustment to old age. Culture and Ageing (1967) is a landmark work bringing anthropological perspectives to problems of ageing. Clark’s work took the Anthropology of Ageing in a new direction toward Medical Anthropology. She founded the Medical Anthropology Program at the University of California in San Francisco.

In the early 1970’s Donald Cowgill, a sociologist, and Lowell Holmes, an anthropologist teamed up to examine the effects of cultural transformation in the form of modernization upon ageing. Ageing and Modernization (1972) is a ground-breaking volume in that it bridges ageing in simpler societies with those of industrial capitalism. Cowgill and Holmes offer an explicit comparative theory that stimulated much research into the effects of cultural change.

By the late 1970’s more anthropologists moved into gerontology. Symposia on ageing start to appear at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Soon anthropologists start attending GSA in increasing numbers. Between 1975 and 1978 the Association for Anthropology and Gerontology (AAGE) was founded. This was stimulated through two summer conferences at the University of Chicago organized by Bernice Neugarten and GSA. The intent of the conferences was to attract younger scholars from different disciplines into gerontology. AAGE links about 300 researchers, not all of whom are anthropologists, into an organization that is broadly interested in promoting qualitative research of a cultural and comparative nature on the diverse issues of ageing. Meetings are held both at GSA and AAA. The organization promotes symposia at both meetings and publishes a newsletter The Age and Anthropology Quarterly.

What is it that anthropology does that makes it a major player in gerontology? First, anthropology is comparative. Ever since the invention of the comparative method by E. B. Tylor, anthropology has investigated other cultures abroad and specific contexts at home. Ethnographies or descriptions of cultures around the world provide information for systematic cross-culture research as seen in the Human Relations Area Files. Teams of anthropologists have also investigated specific problems using several cultures such as in Project AGE. This team project examined the effects of community differences and similarities on pathways to well-being in old age as well as the meaning of age and the organization of the life course in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America (Keith, et. al., 1994). At home anthropologists have explored the social world of older people wherever they are found. Among the contexts investigated are nursing homes, retirement communities, senior center, apartment houses, smaller communities, and even single room occupancy hotels of the inner city. Secondly, ethnographic methods are used to arrive at an understanding of what is happening in a specific context. These methods are predominately qualitative in order to reveal the cultural world as people themselves see it. Finally, anthropology is holistic as it attempts to understand a complex world in the entire context in which it is situated.

In looking at some of the diverse questions anthropologists have asked, I am going to ask a riddle. Some of these will be outrageous from a European perspective, others will be serious. I then will give my anthropological answer. I use riddles as my framework partly because of the theme of the BSG conference – The Ageing Jigsaw. I am also borrowing from Paul Spencer’s edited volume, Anthropology and the Riddle of the Sphinx (1990).

Why aren’t we born old and grow young? Reversal of ageing is only a subject that can be treated in novels such as in The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Greer (2004). This riddle has both a simple and a complicated answer. The simplest answer is that it is time’s arrow. Research in physics on the nature of time points to the fact that time is the 4th dimension and is a property of the universe. However, in spite of the grand theorizing in physics, most of it is not relevant for us in gerontology. The more complicated anthropological answer is that time is subject to cultural interpretation and is related to language. All we humans experience in the physical world is duration and change which gets incorporated into cultural understandings. It is the tense structure of a language which codifies time. Indo-European languages have three tenses: a past, present, and future. This is time’s arrow and Europeans think in temporal stages. Austro-Dravidian speakers of Southeast Asia and Australia, and Uto-Aztecan speakers of North America use only two tenses. These languages code a present and a becoming, no past or future. Also these languages use a distance modifier to denote how temporally separated from the present. A good example of temporal thinking in these two tense languages is the Australian Aborigine’s dream time. This is an understanding of human’s place in the universe and a connection to the past which is conceived as the “always been, always will be.” Astrological time also illustrates how culture gets involved in interpreting time. Most astrological calendars use intersecting cycles to give meaning to the fortunes of the day. For instance in Indonesia, the signs of the day shapes behavior. On especially bad days, no one leaves their home. For Europeans, we have a cycle of named days and numbered days. When Friday comes up with the number 13, people take extra care. Most of the literature on time is on measurement. The Gregorian calendar is a major cultural achievement in that it is an excellent measure of the true solar year. Although the Gregorian adjustment to the Julian calendar happened in 1582, it was not universally accepted around the globe. The U.K. was the last major European power to do so in 1782. China was the last to sign on in 1942. The Gregorian calendar is a measure of time, but it does far more. First, a built in assumption is that the years are numbered from a fixed point forward and backward. This is the year 1 or the birth of Christ. At the time of this invention, Europeans had no conception of zero. The effect of this cultural innovation is to give the illusion that the stream of time is extra-cultural. The counting of the years is divorced from local political figures. Otherwise in the U.K. 2007 would be the 55th year of the reign of Elizabeth II and in the U.S. the same year would be the 7th year in the presidency of George W. Bush. For gerontology, this calendar enables us to calculate chronological age. It also enables states to use chronological age to define citizenship. Most importantly for gerontology, this reminds us that age is a temporal variable and one that is subject to interpretation. Time never hurt anyone, but it is what happens in time that is important and interesting.

The answer to this riddle is not simple. People actually do escalate and deescalate their age. For instance English barristers actually wear white wigs to look older and distinguished. In many cultures, growing old had its advantages. Age brings with it experience and wisdom and most usually power over others. In Ecuador, Pakistan and the former Soviet state of Georgia, gerontologists thought for a while that they found populations of extremely long living people. Shangra-la vanished once ages of individuals claiming to be 130 years old were documented using historical records. Age escalation here brought prestige among other things. We could ask the riddle another way. Why don’t Europeans escalate their age? They probably would if it were advantageous. On the other hand, it is hard to do since nearly all Europeans have birth certificates. When age brings the advantage of pension eligibility, it is one of the few times in life when one must present a birth certificate. Europeans do deescalate their ages with hair dye and beauty creams in the effort to appear youthful. There are basically two reasons why age is not escalated. The first is because of the market and the Pepsi Generation. Children and teenagers are big business and cultural images in advertising idealize youth. Second, there is marked negativism about old age. The market is not as lucrative except for health care.

Negativism and ageing appears to be a prevalent theme in Western Culture. In examining the semantics of the English word “age,” we find two main meanings. The first centers on decrepitude and disorganization. The second deals with geology, time and organization. If old is on the negative end, is youth a positive contrast? In Project AGE we asked people to select the best age to be and the worst age to be. Most people liked their own age group. The least liked age group was the young. It seems as though the best thing about being young is that you out grow it.

This riddle is the riddle of the Sphinx. A lot of things change in time. This makes for age to be one of the most challenging phenomenona to investigate simply because it is a temporal phenomenon. It is the complexity and dimensionality of what changes that makes age so difficult. Time and age are like trying to capture and investigate moving targets as they go forward. It was the age, period, cohort problem that made us realize we were dealing with lots of change in separate dimensions within the same time frame. Soon we conceptualized different kinds of time. Life time is biological individuals and their state of health as they get older. Historical time refers to the contextual changes happening within an entire society or on a global scale. Social time is comprised of social clocks which organize the social world as individuals pass through a life course. Life courses are or can be multidimensional consisting of social clocks related to work, education and leisure. Individuals also find age norms centered on marriage, family and kinship. In addition there are temporal expectations in community affairs and spiritual matters. There are lots of different social clocks operating in the same time, both real and normative.

The answer to this riddle has to be yes, but with a caution. There are going to be issues that are universal while others are going to be specific to a culture. All people age, have families and work. In the comparative research of Project AGE we see how age, families and work are configured differently in Africa and in Ireland or North America. Smaller scaled societies in the Kalahari of Botswana such as the !Kung and Herero make their living through foraging or through the herding of cattle. The conception of age is the relativity of younger or older. Although the Herero have a system of named years, these do not translate into chronology. !Kung adults contribute to the food quest until physical declines reduce their activities to the collection of firewood and finally to sitting in camp. Herero engage in heavy work throughout their lives and in old age they proudly command their children to work for them as they did for their parents. Work in both of these societies is organized through families. For the !Kung families are bilateral with the residential unit consisting of individuals who work together. Herero families are nested in a lineage structure organized around the herding of cattle. In both contexts adult children never leave or are not far from their parents.

By contrast people in the industrial societies of Ireland and the United States, make their living through wage labor. Age here is chronologically defined with privileges and citizenship granted by the state. Adults in these societies participate in the labor market to meet their needs and to finance the times when they can no longer participate. Ideally, workers here enjoy the end of life dedicated to leisure activities. Families are bilateral and are not units of production. Parents do not expect adult children to remain at home. Instead the empty nest is a period of life to be enjoyed as children leave and find their way continuing to develop through their work and families.

Do we find different life stages across cultures? Or do we accept Shakespeare? As gerontologists we are familiar with the three boxes of life: adolescence, adulthood, and old age. These categories are our own creation as we understand the consequences of state rules surrounding citizenship and work. What happens if we ask people in different contexts this riddle? In Project AGE we did exactly this. Our informants were asked to examine a card deck containing descriptions of social persona comprised of only adults. The criteria defining these hypothetical, but realistic personas were specific for each site. Four of our communities are in industrialized nations (U.S., urban Ireland, and Hong Kong) and are what we identify as three box sites. People here saw an average of 5 life stages with a range of 0 to 13 stages. Common criteria within these sites included work, marriage and educational status of children. Site specific criteria included such issues as participation in voluntary associations or the status of the parental generation.

An unanticipated finding was that informants in non-industrialized contexts (rural Ireland and Botswana) had trouble in grouping personas into life stages. In these sites, we do not find wage labor. Hence, there are no age norms surrounding work, only physical ability. Participation in universal education is minimal. Hence, children are not finely graded by age. Women have more children and longer reproductive lives lasting into their 40’s. Hence, families are less age differentiated and generations more continuous. Our conclusion is that it is the institutions in which people play out their lives and the age norms in those institutions which define a staged life course. Where age norms shape work and education, informants see life stages. Where work is shaped by ability and educational institutions irrelevant, informants are puzzled by the stageing of life. Regardless of organizing life into stages, these are not the same as the stages defined by gerontology.

The answer to this riddle is that it depends on several things. This is actually a riddle about well-being. In Project AGE we asked informants for an example of a person who was doing well in old age. Then we asked for an example of a person doing poorly in old age. We also asked for the reasons why. Our results are consistent with the well-being literature except for a couple of surprises. Across all sites the common dimensions that shape a good or difficult old age are health, material security, social connectedness (mostly family), and qualities of personal character. Although seemingly universal, the meanings of these themes are quite different across the sites. For instance, in Africa health concerns are mostly about physical strength, while in North America informants talked about fear of the consequences of disability and the medical industrial complex. In Africa material security refers primarily to food and in North America the same concerns are over adequate income. In Africa our informants saw the absence of adult children as bad, while in North America the same absence was seen as good.

Our unanticipated result is a dimension shaping the experience of old age which we identify as “sociality.” Overall this means being a person who is easy to get along with and is attractive socially. In our Asian site of Hong Kong a significant number of our informants characterized a person having a difficult old age as being a nag or intolerant and judgmental toward younger generations. On the flip side, for good old age one is tolerant or keeps their opinions to themselves. In the U.S. the parallel on the good side of old age is “being active.” The negative is “being a cry baby, telling you all her troubles.” Most interesting is that in Africa this theme is never mentioned. Here one commands their kin. It does not matter how crabby you are, they will do what you say, at least for the Herero. Older !Kung, on the other hand, are known for their fairly abrasive complaints reminding others about their needs. With the reduced functions of families in large scaled industrial societies, a premium is placed on sociality, underscoring the more voluntary nature of social relationships.

My answer to this riddle is that knowledge of the political economy and the mode of production are essential in understanding an experience of ageing. Political and economic issues condition the opportunities and the life strategies that people figure out in ordering their lives. Along this line we can ask, is there a mode of production that works better in old age? It is difficult to point to any one economy as best, partly because of diversity, but there are also costs and benefits for the old in any economy. For the vast majority of the history of our species, families have organized production and consumption. Foragers such as the !Kung or Inuit families mobilize their members to hunt or gather and then to share the foods that have been collected. Among horticulturalists and pastoralists, who rely on domesticates, it is an extended family that organizes farming and herding as well as storage and consumption. Even as cultures become more complicated with hierarchies and redistribution, families remain the primary productive unit. With tribute, families have to work harder to produce more to pay taxes, rents and debts. A departure from this pattern happened in the late 18th century in the U.K. Capitalism reorganized production and consumption. Production happens in non-domestic settings where energy, technology, resources and labor are supervised and controlled. Production is no longer primarily for domestic consumption. Instead production is for corporate profits and the market. Family units are reduced in economic functions, consuming through wages in the market place. Capitalism has created new problems for old age. When families were the producing units, the old were not excluded from consumption. Families solved the problems of their older members for better or worse. Among the new problems for the old, we will outline two which are core issues in gerontology:

• Families & Support: Perhaps the most significant transformation that happened with the advent of capitalism is that parents lost control of their children. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Parents are pleased to see their children establish themselves and succeed in careers and marriage. However, in a parental household we find only the parents and the immature filial dependents in the house. The mature children are working and often at a distance. Although families have not disintegrated, it is distance, two career families, and the presence of dependent grandchildren that can make the senior generation’s ageing a painful experience for more than one generation.
• The Problem of Wages: Wage labor has its advantages in making a living. One takes the wage and forages the market place to meet needs. However, what happens when one has no job because of unemployment, illness, disability, or retirement? Is one excluded from foraging the market place and consuming? Wages have to be high enough so that capital can be accumulated for meeting needs when one is out of or no longer in the labor market. Retirement needs to be financed through deferred wages, savings, insurance or state funded pensions.

Capitalism is still very new and changing as it spreads around the globe. Since the 1970’s most of the social sciences have been concerned with globalization. Is globalization an issue of concern for gerontology? With the problem of wages and globalization of labor, the answer is yes. Globalization has increased the competition within the redistributive economies of nation states. It is through this part of a nation’s economy that most programs for older people are financed. Certainly the conflict in the Near East has decreased the pool of tax dollars for older people. Globalized labor has consequences for old age. We have seen wages stagnate. Defined pension plans have been replaced by defined contribution pensions with questions about adequacy. Saving rates have declined. In the U. S. the rate of saving has declined to the level it was in 1932 in the depth of the Great Depression. The net effect of globalization is to individualize risk in old age. The 21st century is going to be a scarier time in which to grow old. This is for the heartland of capitalism in Europe and North America. As the global assembly line spreads around the world we find sweatshops. Laborers are mainly women and children. Indentured labor is quite common with no hope of paying back the initial grant. Not only are working conditions problematic, but wages are low. Half the world’s workers earn two dollars (USD) a day. Low wages result in the inability to save or defer those wages. Adult children are not able to help older parents and have difficulty sustaining their dependent children. Loans from the World Bank can wipe out a redistributive economy in efforts to repay the loans. A desperate example of what has happened is older women in Zambia who are reduced to harvesting grains of grass in order to get by. Poverty is a long term problem that has been intensified by capitalism and globalization. Poverty affects people of all ages. Poverty is a global problem and because of its effects on older people it is a concern of gerontology.

Old age is not without its problems. Old age also has its potentials. In gerontology we can use all our interdisciplinary powers to fix the problems. If we can’t fix them we can scientifically explain why they happen. Beyond science and its application, the last of life will remain a mystery. Because of the proximity to death old age is filled with ambiguities, uncertainties and ad hoc qualities. Cultural ideals of “ought” and “should” are difficult simply because of the liminality involved. Mystery is its own challenge for better or worse.

The theme of the 2006 BSG conference was The Ageing Jigsaw. This is an interesting metaphor and one which calls for interdisciplinary cooperation. Put the pieces together and the picture emerges. For gerontology, anthropology holds some of the important pieces. First, the comparative nature of anthropology is more than international. Through comparisons we can ask what is universal about ageing and distinguish that from what is related to a specific context. Secondly, the local level community focus leads to a realization of the diversity of experiences in ageing. Thirdly, the holistic views of contexts lead us to consider the bigger picture and to avoid some of the pitfalls of microfication. Finally, ethnography takes us to the understandings of the people who live in a context and are experiencing ageing.

However, gerontology needs to be more than the mere sum of its disciplines. Not only do we need to learn from each other, but we should embrace the phenomenon that unites us in a somewhat different way. Age is the picture and age is temporal. We need a perspective and perhaps a theory which resolves the riddle of the Sphinx. What is it that changes as an individual ages? Some very bad things can happen as an individual ages. Indeed, the practical side of gerontology tries to do something about this. That is why the major topics in gerontology have to do with medicalization, care-giving, social support, and financial issues. The study of ageing has responded to capitalism with a Gerontological Industrial Complex or the Ageing Enterprise. We have done well here, but theory is lacking as we focus on micro issues and ignore the broader context. The pieces of the interdisciplinary jigsaw do not fit together and we can’t find the picture.

The riddle of the Sphinx invites us to theorize about a phenomenon which is the passage of lives through time. Life courses, themselves, are full of riddles. Older people look back in a life review and make sense of what has happened. They also look forward and wonder where it will take them. The phenomenon of gerontology is the riddled life course and what changes through time as conditioned by lots of things. This includes political economies, modes of production, families, communities, religious beliefs, values and cultural understandings. Older people are the outcome of these processes operating as they continue their journey through time.

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