@article{9aeea18496a7420989f9dfc02aac195a,
title = "Reconfiguring Old Age: Elderly Women and Concerns over Care in Southeastern Botswana",
abstract = "This paper explores recent changes in the negotiation of female old age in Southeastern Botswana. Over the past one-quarter century epidemiological and demographic transitions, increasing pressures on lay nursing care, changes in work, and the introduction of pensions have led to a fracturing of old age. The constituent elements of old age - senescence and social elderhood - have shifted at different tempos and in different directions in historically contingent ways. Using Margaret Lock's notion of {"}local biology,{"} this paper explores transformations in the bio-social dialectic that have reconfigured and redefined the aging process. It argues that the {"}normal{"} physiology and social position of seniors have changed so that chronic illness is increasingly seen as part of {"}normal{"} old age, as is the lack of socio-economic and cultural power to command care.",
keywords = "Aging, Botswana, Care, Chronic illness, Senescence",
author = "Julie Livingston",
note = "Funding Information: I wish to thank Stacy Pigg and the anonymous reviewers from Medical Anthropology for their insights and encouragement. I have also benefited from earlier discussions with Fred Klaits over the nature and meaning of {\textquoteleft}{\textquoteleft}care{\textquoteright}{\textquoteright} in Botswana. An earlier version of this paper, entitled {\textquoteleft}{\textquoteleft}Ideas of the Natural in the Body: Strategies for Discovering the Baseline,{\textquoteright}{\textquoteright} was presented at a workshop at Northwestern University, March 9–10, 2001. I am grateful for the comments of fellow workshop participants, especially those of Caroline Bledsoe. I am also indebted to the agencies and institutions that funded research on the larger project from which this work is drawn: Fulbright-Hays, the Center for the Study of Health, Culture, and Society at Emory University; the American Historical Association; the Emory Fund for Internationalization; the Emory Institute for African Studies; and the Emory University History Department.",
year = "2003",
month = jul,
doi = "10.1080/01459740306771",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "22",
pages = "205--231",
journal = "Medical Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in Health and Illness",
issn = "0145-9740",
publisher = "Taylor and Francis Ltd.",
number = "3",
}