Of the many topics worthy of discussion regarding older adults and bioethics, two seem to provide an especially pointed opportunity for reflection on our aging society. First, is aging itself something that biomedical researchers should focus on as a deficit to be overcome through eventual anti-aging treatments? While aging may not fall neatly into the disease category, it is clearly the primary susceptibility factor for the innumerable diseases of older adults, and therefore its potential deceleration consistent with the compression (...) of morbidity might constitute a salutary biomedical goal. The aging society is no panacea to those who suffer from a host of chronic illnesses and feel overwhelmed by the burden of years. Second, we must concentrate on the most challenging problematic of our current aging society, assuming that anti-aging technologies will only become available in future decades. One immense problem is the harsh reality of irreversible progressive dementia, which will serve here as an example of the rise of chronic illness, for which age itself is the primary risk factor. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: What Does It Mean to Grow Old? Reflections from the Humanities. By Thomas R. Cole and Sally Gadow Our Aging Society: Paradox and Promise. Alan Pifer and Lydia Bronte.

The ethical dimensions of an aging society are larger than the experience of chronic illness, the moral concerns of health care professionals, or the allocation of health care resources. What, then, is the role of bioethics in an aging society, beyond calling attention to these problems? Once we’ve agreed that aging is morally important and that population‐level aging across wealthy nations raises ethical concerns that cannot be fixed through transhumanism or other appeals to transcend aging and mortality through (...) technology, what is our field’s contribution? We argue that it is time for bioethics to turn toward social justice and problems of injustice and that part of doing so is articulating a concept of good citizenship in an aging society that goes beyond health care relationships. (shrink)

The complexity of population ageing effect is a significant challenge at a regional and local level. Adaptation activities require the cooperation of local governments, business entities and non-governmental organizations. The article describes the dimensions of interventions, typology of “shrinking regions” and two initiatives: Regions for All Ages and SEN@ER - Silver Economy Network of European Regions. In addition, essay discusses the dilemmas of creating special regional strategies with their implementation factors and barriers in the construction of silver economies. It is (...) supplemented by some conclusions from the analysis of selected regional development strategies in Poland. Summary sets out possible directions for further research for national institutions. (shrink)

An explosion in the varieties of life-extending interventions for older persons is changing the face of many medical specialties in the United States, altering the nature of end-stage disease, and reshaping societal expectations about normal old age, longevity, and the time for death. There is no doubt that the rapid growth of the over-85 age group and better health in late life for many people in the United States are redefining “old.” Robert Butler, founding director of the National Institute on (...) Aging, has stated that “80 is the new 60,” adding to other popular remarks that signify a changed understanding of life course expectations, especially for those who can access all that medicine has to offer. Overall .. (shrink)

The Ageing of societies is a unique historical development of mankind. Today, such ageing is recognized as a threat for developed societies. There is fear of increasing inequality in health and in access to health care. Apart from the costs of ageing and care, such fear creates intergenerational conflicts. This paper explores what values are at stake when a society ages. At issue here is the social position of the old citizens and the way in which they are regarded (...) by their fellow citizens. Findings indicate the need to contemplate the consequences of ageing for societies and to discuss the impact these have for the values dominating contemporary post-welfare states. European welfare states were based on a balanced combination of three values: freedom, equality, and solidarity. Because these values are misbalanced now, equal accessibility of care and conditions for social participation are disappearing. Therefore, we shall have to think about new ways in which our societies can reaffirm basic human values. (shrink)

노인 돌봄의 문제는 세대와 성별 등을 초월한 전 인류가 직면하고 있는 문제로서 모두가 함께 나누어 가져야 할 책임의 문제로 여겨야 한다. 현대 사회에서 개인의 자유는 무엇보다 소중하며 보호되어야 하지만 함께 살아가는 공동체의 구성원으로서 개인은 우리 모두가 관심을 가져야 하는 공동의 문제에 대해 간과할 수 없다. 사회 전체가 함께 해결해야할 공동의 문제에 대해 서로 소통함으로써 해결 방안을 찾기 위한 노력을 하지 않는다면 개인들이 지닌 다원적이며 상대적인 가치들로 인해 사회적 갈등은 증폭될 수 밖에 없을 것이다. 이러한 점에서 하버마스는 개인들의 가치를 인정하면서도 담론을 (...) 통해 강제적이지 않는 방식으로 사회적 합의에 도달하고자 하였으며, 이것이 바로 의사소통적 이성인 것이다. 다시 말해 하버마스에 의하면 사회 구성원들은 상호 간의 언어 행위를 통해 서로 이해하고 합의하는 과정이 필요하며, 이로써 사회적 갈등을 합리적으로 해결할 수 있다. 노인돌봄 체계의 공적 가치를 논의함에 있어 사회에 존재하는 다양한 의견을 인정함과 동시에 담론의 과정을 통해 사회적 합의를 이끌어내는 것은 무엇보다 중요하다. 이러한 점에서 고령사회에 노인 돌봄의 가치에 대한 성찰과 공적 체계 구축을 위한 절차로서 담론 윤리에 대해 논의하는 것은 고령사회의 급격하게 증가하는 노인의 보호를 넘어 사회적으로 취약한 상황에 있는 사람들에 대한 논의 절차를 마련하기 위한 기초가 된다는 점에서 의의를 가질 것이다. (shrink)

This book examines the relevance of modern medicine and healthcare in shaping the lives of elderly persons and ageing societies. Combining individual and social dimensions, Planning Later Life discusses the ethical, social, and political consequences of increasing life expectancies and demographic change in the context of biomedicine and public health. By focusing on the field of biomedicine and healthcare, the authors engage readers in a dialogue on the ethical and social implications of recent trends in dementia research and care, advance (...) healthcare planning, or the rise of anti-ageing medicine and prevention. Bringing together the largely separated debates of individualist bioethics on the one hand, and public health ethics on the other, the volume deliberately considers the entanglements of envisioning, evaluating, and controlling individual and societal futures. The process of devising and exploring the various positive and negative visions and strategies related to later life is rarely reflected systematically from a philosophical, sociological, and ethical point of view. As such, this book will be crucial to those working and studying in the life sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences, particularly in the areas of bioethics, social work, gerontology and aging studies, healthcare and social service, sociology, social policy, and geography and population studies. (shrink)

Background: Due to the aging society the number of informal caregivers is growing. Most informal caregivers are women working as nurses within a health organization and they have a high risk of developing mental and physical exhaustion. Until now little research attention has been paid to the expectations and needs of double duty caregivers and the role of self-management in managing private-work balance.Objective: The overall aim of this study was to investigate the expectations and needs of double duty caregivers (...) in Netherlands, and to examine the meaning of self-management in managing work-life balance.Method: Different research methods have been applied in this exploratory study. Firstly, a scoping review has been conducted on the topics self-management and sustainable employability of double-duty caregivers using the search engines: CINAHL, MEDLINE, PubMed, and Google Scholar. Furthermore, a qualitative study has been conducted through focus groups with double duty caregivers.Results: Twenty studies that met the inclusion criteria could be identified. We found that double duty caregivers have different motivations for being a double duty caregiver based on internal and external expectations. Double duty caregiving causes a lot of mental and physical pressure for the caregiver. To be able to combine both duty’s, double duty caregivers need flexibility and understanding from the workplace. Through two focus groups we found that social support from the workplace is not enough to be able to manage the situation. Self-management skills are important to be able to communicate effectively with the workplace and community care organizations about the kind of support needed. Also, health care organizations should offer the same support to double duty caregivers as any other informal caregiver.Discussion: Double-duty caregivers are at high risk of developing symptoms of overload and risk of reduced self-management quality and employability levels across time. Health care organizations and the double duty caregiver often wait too long to act instead of taking more preventive measures. Furthermore, community care organizations should dialog with double duty caregivers about their wishes concerning the division of caring tasks. This finding calls for special attention, with long-term solutions at both macro, organizational, and employee level. (shrink)

Book Review Jörg Tremmel et al. : Youth Quotas and other Efficient Forms of Youth Participation in Ageing Societies. Cham: Springer. 188 pages. ISBN: 978-3-319-13430-7. Price: £90.00.

This paper examines how Japan has embraced advanced technologies to address the challenges of an aging society and shrinking labor markets. Using Japan as a case study, this paper explores the relationship between human dignity, the intrinsic value of work, and the fourth industrial revolution. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section describes the scale of aging and shrinking labor markets in Japan, and the measures that the Japanese government has used to tackle these problems. The (...) second section offers a selection of five mini cases that show how advanced technologies are used in different sectors of the Japanese economy. The third section outlines some ethical concerns that go beyond utilitarian benefits of using advanced technologies to address the problem of aging. The perspective of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is adopted as a main advocate of a person-centered social ethics. The fourth section offers an assessment of Japan’s experiment and outlines further research opportunities. (shrink)

The publication of Angelova A. «Religious Gerontology: trends and prospects in the realities of an aging society» is devoted to the history of the emergence, development and also to the elucidation of the subject matter of the latest interdisciplinary section of religious studies. The main problems of religious gerontology are defined and classified, its perspective theoretical and applied directions are designated. The importance of actively popularizing the findings of western gerontologists on the issues of spirituality, religiosity and aging was (...) underscored. The need for such studies on domestic soil is declared, as it can positively influence the difficult gerontological situation that has established in Ukraine. (shrink)

The human life span has been extended considerably, and among the very old, women outnumber men by a large margin. Thus, the aging society cannot be adequately addressed without taking into account the experience of women in specific. This article focuses on women as caregivers for aging parents. It critically assesses what some women philosophers are saying about the basis and limits of these caregiving duties.

There is a common tradition in European education going back to the Middle Ages which long played a part in providing the curriculum of schools which catered both for the wealthy and for able sons of less well-to-do families. Originally published in 1974, this volume examines the relationship between education and society in the different countries of Europe from which differences in tradition and practice emerge. The countries discussed include: France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Poland and Sweden.

웰니스케어(Wellness Care)는 ‘웰니스(wellness)와 돌봄(care)’이 결합된 개념으로서, ICT 기반 웰니스케어는 신체적·정서적 건강과 환경적·재정적 안정 등 개인의 삶 전반을 건강하게 하는 복합적 요인들을 관리하는 것을 목표로 한다. 이러한 측면에서 ICT 기반 웰니스케어는 고령사회에 노인 건강을 포함한 삶 전반의 문제를 예방하고 관리하는 총체적인 노인돌봄 체계로서 중요한 의미를 가질 수 있을 것이다. 그러나 이처럼 ICT 기반 웰니스케어가 노인 돌봄 체계로서 중요한 의미를 가진다 할지라도, 이에 대한 사회적 토대가 우선적으로 마련되지 않는다면 노인 돌봄의 문제를 해결함에 있어 ICT 기반 웰니스케어의 적극적인 역할을 기대할 수 없을 것이다. (...) 따라서 고령사회의 ICT 기반 웰니스케어 체계를 구축하기 위해서는 이에 대한 사회적 공감대, ICT 기반 웰니스케어에서 환자-의사의 새로운 신뢰 관계, 그리고 노인들의 ICT 기술 활용 교육 등의 문제를 해결하기 위한 개인적․사회적 차원의 노력이 선행되어야 할 것이다. 즉 ICT와 같은 첨단 기술을 이용하기 위해서는 이에 대한 개인적사회적 공감이 전제되어야 한다. 공감은 그 편리성에도 불구하고 ICT 도입으로 인한 인간의 도구화와 소외 의식을 극복하여 개인과 집단, 그리고 사회를 인간적으로 소통시킬 수 있는 지반이 되기 때문이다. 이에 본 논문에서는 ICT 기반 웰니스케어를 노인들이 활용함에 있어 발생할 수 있는 문제점을 분석하고 이를 극복하기 위한 토대로서 공감에 대해 고찰해 볼 것이다. 그리고 이를 통해 고령사회, ICT 기반 웰니스케어 활용을 위한 토대로서 공감이 가지는 의의에 대해 논의해 보고자 한다. (shrink)

고령화 사회로 접어들면서 그간 가족관계 속에서 행해졌던 돌봄은 여성의 사회 진출 확대, 핵가족화, 출산율 저하 등의 문제로 인해 가족 단위로는 감당하기 어려운 상황에 직면하게 되었다. 이에 따라 고령화 사회의 노인 돌봄을 위한 체계는 가족과 같은 사적 차원을 넘어서서 노인요양보험 등 사회 제도에 기초한 공적 차원으로 전환되고 있는 추세이다. 에바 키테이(Eva F. Kittay)는 모든 인간은 누군가에게 의존을 해야 생존할 수 있고 이로 인해 모든 인간은 돌봄을 제공하고 동시에 돌봄을 받는 상호 간의 윤리적 의무가 있다고 주장하면서 돌봄의 문제를 사회적 책임으로 확장시키고자 하였다. (...) 인류가 무리 생활을 통해 정서적 유대를 기초로 고도의 사회성을 발전시켜 성공한 종이라는 점에서 이러한 주장은 설득력을 가진다. 노인 돌봄 역시 세대 간의 감정적 유대감 형성과 같은 정서적 영역의 토대를 마련할 수 있다면 사회적 책임이 가지는 의무론적인 형식성을 극복하게 될 것이다. 공감은 이러한 점에서 인간 소통과 유대의 결과인 사회성 형성의 강력한 정서적 연결 고리가 될 수 있다. 막스 셸러(Max Scheler)에 따르면 공감은 타인에 대한 인격적 존중을 바탕으로 타인을 나와 같이 느끼고 이해하는 것으로서 인간이라면 누구나 지니고 있는 보편적 능력이다. 따라서 고령화 사회에서의 노인 돌봄은 노인에 대한 존중을 바탕으로 그들의 삶과 고통을 느끼고 이해하는 공감 형성을 통해 실천될 때 비로소 진정한 사회적 책임의 영역으로 승화될 수 있을 것이다. 이에 본 논문에서는 고령화 사회의 바람직한 노인 돌봄 문화를 형성하기 위한 토대로서 공감에 근거한 사회적 책임에 대해 논의해 보고자 한다. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Ethics in an Aging Society. By Harry R. Moody. Baltimore.

Paperback. What has happened to the science of Logic, as an academic discipline and pursuit? The diagnoses do not coincide, but the recognition is growing that since the days of Mill, Russell or Beth, something has gone wrong. A logical vacuum - theoretical as well as practical - in large parts of contemporary culture is easily perceived and is particularly visible in politicis, precisely where logic as a science ought to make its greatest impact.The present volume offers analyses and reflections (...) of various types, written by logicians and other analytical philosophers. Some analyse the logic of political activists and thinkers, or the political thought of a logician. Other chapters offer concrete logico-analytical studies of burning political issues of our time, emphasizing the possibilities for an advancement of logic in, and through parliamentary debate, and of the problems connected with this goal. The final part of the book looks at possib. (shrink)

Using a mixture of economic and demographic analysis, this book studies the changing patterns of family formation over the last twenty years.

Ethics, Aging and Society...is the first major work in ten years to critically address issues and methodologies in aging and ethics...This well-organized volume begins theoretically and offers new ways of thinking about ethics that can handle the complexities and realities of aging in particular social contexts."--Choice This new research-based book, by experts in the field of ethics, is excellent and much-needed...I challenge you to consider reading this book and seeing all the ways in which you might be forced to (...) rethink things that most of us take as given for ethics and aging. I know you will not be disappointed and I guarantee you will end up thinking long and hard about personal and professional decisions you may have made as well as your assumptions about aging in America."--CFLE Network Newsletter This is a book that should be required reading for all involved in the ethical provision of services to the aging on any level, as well as for policy makers and administrators in positions of influence over the lives of older patients."--PsycCRITIQUES...the authors' application of feminist ethics to frail elders rings true to both my clinical experience working with frail elders, and my research experience trying to understand their quality of life concerns...there were true gems of ideas [in this book] that illuminated the limitations of the dominant paradigm of autonomy in bioethics. [The authors] make a compelling critique of end-of-life care."--GeriPal: A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Blog This book presents second generation issues in ethics, aging, and society by presenting critical outcomes that arise when ethics is applied to the practical concerns that occur in day-to-day elder care. The first volume in over 10 years to address ethics and gerontology, it is unparalleled in its comprehensiveness and integration of well-developed philosophical arguments with empirical research, humanistic scholarship, and insights gained from practical experience. This book challenges the tried and true approaches to ethical issues in aging and opens avenues for creative problem-solving. The authors' diverse backgrounds bring the advantages of both interdisciplinary scholarship and practical experience to this comprehensive textbook. It is an essential resource for those interested in, and working with, older people, from upper-level undergraduate students and graduate-division students, to gerontology practitioners in training. Key Features: Presents the first major work in over 10 years to integrate the disciplines of ethics and aging Includes case studies derived from day-to-day practice Addresses individual/clinical ethics in health and long-term care and ethical issues raised by public policy, cultural norms and social attitudes Examines such critical issues as Alzheimer's disease, long-term care, ageism, public policy, anti-aging medicine, elder abuse, and natural disasters Explores new directions in ethical and social philosophy as they pertain to gerontology and care. (shrink)

Population aging is becoming an inevitable phenomenon in Albanian post-socialist society, posing multi-faceted challenges to its individuals, families and society as a whole. Since 1991, the Albanian population has been exposed to intensive demographic changes caused by unintended aspects of socio-economic transition from a planned socialist economy to a market-oriented capitalist one. Ongoing processes of re-organization of social institutions increased its socio-economic insecurity leading to the application of various coping mechanisms. While adjusting themselves to other aspects of life, (...) people changed their decisions of having children and leaving the country. On the other hand, replacement of former traditional extended family forms with diverse living arrangements and family structures has been the outcome of the combination of three factors: falling fertility, increasing life expectancy and increasing migration. However, family remains the basic social unit that provides support, care and protection for its old members even though its capacities are diminishing. Family Life Cycle Theory views family development as a series of stages where family members deal with various developmental tasks and play different roles as they move from one stage to another. This paper examines population aging in Albanian post-socialist society. Based on Family Life Cycle Theory and Family Development Theory, it reviews literature and uses secondary data to discuss its implications for elderly care and family life. It concludes that population aging requires better understanding of this process in order to facilitate a series of family adaptations to respond to the changing needs of its elderly members. (shrink)

The mobility restrictions related to COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in the biggest disruption to individual mobilities in modern times. The crisis is clearly spatial in nature, and examining the geographical aspect is important in understanding the broad implications of the pandemic. The avalanche of mobile Big Data makes it possible to study the spatial effects of the crisis with spatiotemporal detail at the national and global scales. However, the current crisis also highlights serious limitations in the readiness to take the (...) advantage of mobile Big Data for social good, both within and beyond the interests of health sector. We propose two strategical pathways for the future use of mobile Big Data for societal impact assessment, addressing access to both raw mobile Big Data as well as aggregated data products. Both pathways require careful considerations of privacy issues, harmonized and transparent methodologies, and attention to the representativeness, reliability and continuity of data. The goal is to be better prepared to use mobile Big Data in future crises. (shrink)

The concept of society sui generis ¿ society as a level of reality which could be studied scientifically ¿ crystallized in the middle of the nineteenth century in Europe, with the work of Durkheim, Marx and Weber and today, more than at any other period in history, the idea of the social has gained a foothold in philosophy, biology, and neuroscience. However, this idea has emerged into prominence not through the historical or contemporary efforts of sociologists, but mainly (...) through the efforts of biologists and neuroscientists. This book seeks to re-establish the credentials of sociology as the science of society. While acknowledging the amalgamation of traditional disciplines into interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary networks of research and theory, and championing interdisciplinarity in recognising the capacity of converging perspectives to yield more interesting general theories of social life, the author defends disciplinarity in maintaining sociology¿s achievements as a discipline. With chapters on the sociological world view, imagining society, the self, love, education, mathematics and religion, The Age of the Social re-states the importance of sociology as the source of robust ideas about the social in an age in which this notion has grown in importance. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences, with interests in method and philosophy in the social disciplines. (shrink)

Politics in Golden Age Denmark was largely an affair of liberal and conservative elites wrestling with the emergent phenomena of the “common man.” Denmark's bloodless revolution of 1848 led to a nationalist civil war and to the creation of a People's Church. The heightened fervor surrounding questions of nation and church forms the context within which Kierkegaard wrote. In particular, Kierkegaard set himself against Grundtvig and Martensen. These churchmen were public figures with a political voice. Kierkegaard's arguments against these and (...) other influential “world historians” reveal how his political imagination is worked out in the related areas of history, the moment, identity, and the common man. Crucial planks in the Kierkegaardian platform such as living in the present, the subjective critique of systematizing objectivity, and the single individual against the crowd, all had—and were seen to have—political implications for the common man in Denmark's Golden Age. (shrink)

This paper explores the intersection of René Girard's mimetic theory and the algorithmic society, particularly in the context of the potential advent of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Girard's theory, which elucidates the dynamics of desire, rivalry, scapegoating, and the sacrificial crisis, provides a unique lens through which to examine the complexities of our relationship with AI and its role in the creation of the sacred. As individuals increasingly rely on AI recommendations, the distinction between personal choice and algorithmic manipulation (...) becomes less clear, raising concerns about the authenticity of cultural expressions and the role of algorithms in shaping cultural narratives. The triangular structure of desire, with AI as the model and individuals as the imitators, underscores the power of algorithms in this process. The sacrificial crisis, a key concept in Girard's theory, becomes a critical point of reflection in the algorithmic society. The exposure of the scapegoating mechanism reveals the destructive potential of algorithmic manipulation and calls for new forms of understanding, empathy, and non-violent solutions. This paper argues that recognizing the sacrificial crisis can prompt individuals and society to critically examine the impact of AI's influence, challenge the narratives it perpetuates, and reclaim agency in the face of algorithmic dominance. This paper further discusses the potential implications of the emergence of AGI, which could intensify the influence of algorithms on the creation of the sacred due to its advanced cognitive capabilities and deep understanding of human desires and behaviors. This could fuel a rapid evolution of the mimetic ecosystem, with profound implications for personal freedom, independent decision-making, and the formation and preservation of individual identity. This paper concludes by emphasizing the need for responsible algorithmic practices and ethical considerations to ensure that the creation of the sacred serves the common good in the algorithmic society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Economy, Society, Tragedy: Moral Reflections in an Age of Crisis and Austerity LOUIS A. RUPRECHT JR. Precisely their tragedies prove that the Greeks were not pessimists... In this sense, I have the right to understand myself as the first tragic philosopher—that is to say, the most extreme antithesis and antipode of a pessimistic philosopher. —Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “The Birth of Tragedy” Orgiastic religion leads most readily to song (...) and music; ritualistic religion inclines toward the pictorial arts; religions enjoining love favor the development of poetry and music. In all of this, the one important fact for us is the significance of the marked rejection of all distinctively aesthetic devices by those religions which are rational, in our special sense. —Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion tragedy and society The title of this review essay is taken from Max Weber’s posthumous magnum opus, Economy and Society,1 an ambitious and wide-ranging comparative sociological analysis of economic orders, social orders and the normative structures that both emerge from and lend meaning to the intersecting economic, political and religious spheres in which complex human arion 28.2 fall 2020 Kathryn A. Kozaitis, Indebted: An Ethnography of Despair and Resilience in Greece’s Second City (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021), 248 pages. This book is the fifteenth in Oxford’s important series, “Issues of Globalization: Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology,” edited by Carla Freeman and Li Zhang. 138 economy, society, tragedy societies take shape. To Weber’s grand and capacious sociological categories, economy and society, I have added a third literary and philosophical term: tragedy. Now, to be sure, Weber thought a great deal about tragedy,2 and was drawn to tragic themes in many of his most salient and influential sociological studies. One need think only of his account of the bureaucratic “routinization” of prophetic charisma in The Sociology of Religion,3 or his depiction of modern humanity’s self-imposed “iron cage” in the rousing final pages of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,4 a text to which I will return at the end of this essay.5 But tragedy entails far more than systemic collapse or self-inflicted disaster. In this essay, I want to explore some of the implications of combining close attention to the lived experience of concrete individuals to the highly theoretical, systems-level analysis inspired by such Weberian categories. Put another way, how may Cultural Anthropology, and more specifically Ethnography, deepen such a globally-oriented Sociology? Here, I intend to supplement Weber’s sociological dyad, economy and society, with a conception of tragedy drawn from the cognate social sciences of Comparative Religion and Cultural Anthropology; I will be using Attic Greek tragedy as a benchmark. More specifically, I wish to highlight some of the ways in which the first book-length ethnographic study of the Greek economic crisis may add vital nuance to Weber’s more theoretical, world-systems approach. That book is Kathryn Kozaitis’s Indebted: An Ethnography of Despair and Resilience in Greece’s Second City, an ethnographic study of the lived reality of Greeks experiencing the double -whammy of a sovereign debt crisis and externally imposed austerity regimes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki; the book is the fifteenth to appear inOxford’s “Issues of Globalization: Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology” series, edited by Carla Freeman and Li Zhang. As Kozaitis demonstrates with sensitivity and eloquence, by zeroing in on the people, rather than the economic policies or the social and administrative structures, Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. 139 certain normative categories and ethical stances become more relevant, many of them implicated in ancient Greek tragedy, and drama more broadly. tragic crises appropriately to a work of cultural ethnography, Kozaitis links the personal to her profession; further still, she weaves her own personal story into the story of the people to whom she is attempting to give voice. This, she notes, constitutes “the auto-ethnography in this ethnography” (4–6). How, then, did this professor of Cultural Anthropology, based in the United States, find her way to Greece’s “second city”? The path was circuitous, and its destination unclear for quite some time. That Kozaitis’s personal... (shrink)

Cross-cultural studies have revealed broad quantitative associations between subsistence practice and demographic parameters for preindustrial populations. One explanation is that variationin the availability of suitable weaning foods influenced the frequency and duration of breastfeeding and thus the length of interbirth intervals and the probability of child survival (the “weaning food availability” hypothesis). We examine the available data on weaning age variation in preindustrial populations and report results of a cross-cultural test of the predictions that weaning occurred earlier in agricultural and (...) pastoral populations because dairy and cereal production increased the availability of easily digestible, nutrientrich foods appropriate for weaning. We found that, contrary to predictions, supplementation with liquid foods other than breast milk was delayed in agricultural populations relative to less agriculturally dependent ones and complementary feeding with solid foods was delayed in pastoral populations relative to those less dependent on herding. Although the duration of breastfeeding was longer in populations dependent on hunting, there was no qualitative evidence that such populations lacked foods appropriate for weaning. The patterns observed suggest that the relationships between demography and subsistence observed among preindustrial societies cannot be explained by the “weaning food availability” hypothesis. We discuss the implications for understanding the mechanisms underlying prehistoric human demography, subsistence shifts, allocation to parenting and mating effort, and the evolutionary implications of tradeoffs between diet and disease. (shrink)

The mid-thirteenth-century theorist and rhetorician Brunetto Latini proposed a vigorous republican account of the art of government and the nature of community in his encyclopedic treatise, Li Livres dou Tresor. The interpretation of Latini's republicanism has been heavily based on its literary sensibilities, its attachment to rhetoric, and its praise for classical civic virtues. But Latini deserves to be classified as a republican insofar as he founds social and political order upon commercial principles—the production and exchange of material goods for (...) profit—and consequent economic defense of republican government. Hence, the example of Latini challenges one of the principal remaining barriers that supposedly separates medieval defenses of republicanism from Renaissance versions. The essay contends that Latini holds that self-governing institutions depend upon and are especially well suited to sustain a society whose conception of the common good includes the creation and exchange of those material necessities required for physical welfare and comfort. (shrink)