"A seminal contribution to the field of medical anthropology on an extremely important topic. A useful and interesting volume for undergraduates, graduate students, and medical researchers interested in dementia."-Tanya Luhrmann, Max Palevsky Professor, Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago

Bringing together essays by nineteen respected scholars, this volume approaches dementia from a variety of angles, exploring its historical, psychological, and philosophical implications. The authors employ a cross-cultural perspective that is based on ethnographic fieldwork and focuses on questions of age, mind, voice, self, loss, temporality, memory, and affect.

Taken together, the essays make four important and interrelated contributions to our understanding of the mental status of the elderly. First, cross-cultural data show that the aging process, while biologically influenced, is also culturally constructed. Second, ethnographic reports raise questions about the diagnostic criteria used for defining the elderly as demented. Third, case studies show how a diagnosis affects a patient's treatment in both clinical and familial settings. Finally, the collection highlights the gap that separates current biological understandings of aging from its cultural meanings.

As Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia continue to command an ever-increasing amount of attention in medicine and psychology, this book will be essential reading for anthropologists, social scientists, and health care professionals.

Annette Leibing is a professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a researcher at the Institute of Social Gerontology of Quebec and MOS/Universit de Montral. Lawrence Cohen is an associate professor of anthropology and South and Southeast Asian studies, and director of the Medical Anthropology Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Thinking about Dementia
Part 1 Changes in Clinical Practice
Chapter 1: Dementia-Near-Death and "Life Itself"
Sharon R. Kaufman
Chapter 2: The Borderlands of Primary Care: Physician and Family Perspectives on "Troublesome" Behaviors of People with Dementia
Ladson Hinton, Yvette Flores, Carol Franz, Isabel Hernandez, and Linda S. Mitteness
Chapter 3: Negotiating the Moral Status of Trouble: The Experiences of Forgetful Individuals Diagnosed with No Dementia
Andre P. Smith
Chapter 4: Diagnosing Dementia: Epidemiological and Clinical Data as Cultural Text
Janice E. Graham
Chapter 5: The Biomedical Deconstruction of Senility and the Persistent Stigmatization of Old Age in the United States
Jesse F. Ballenger
Part 2 The Role of Genomics in Alzheimer Research
Chapter 6: Genetic Susceptibility and Alzheimer's Disease: The "Penetrance" and Uptake of Genetic Knowledge
Margaret Lock, Stephanie Lloyd, and Janalyn Prest
Part 3 The Organization of Voice, Self, or Personhood
Chapter 7: Coherence without Facticity in Dementia: The Case of Mrs. Fine
Athena Helen McLean
Chapter 8: Creative Storytelling and Self-expression among People with Dementia
Anne Davis Basting
Chapter 9: Embodied Selfhood: An Ethnographic Exploration of Alzheimer's Disease
Pia C. Kontos
Chapter 10: Normality and Difference: Institutional Classification and the Constitution of Subjectivity in a Dutch Nursing Home
Roma Chatterji
Chapter 11: Divided Gazes: Alzheimer's Disease, the Person Within, and Death in Life
Annette Leibing
Chapter 12: Being a Good Rjin: Senility, Power, and Self-actualization in Japan
John W. Traphagan
Index