Jay Sokolovsky

Jay Sokolovsky is a cultural Anthropologist with specialties in the anthropology of aging, rural development in Mexico, urban anthropology, medical/psychiatric anthropology and ethnographic video. He is the recipient of the 2013 American Anthropological Association Textor Award in Anticipatory Anthropology for his work in Aging and the Life Course.
Jay is the author of numerous articles and five books including the award winning volume, The Cultural Context of Aging in its 3rd edition (2009). His most recent book is Indigenous Mexico Confronts the 21st Century, to be published by Cengage Press in 2014. His research has been done in a Mexican peasant village, New York’s inner-city, Tampa, Florida, the new town of Columbia, Maryland and in urban neighborhoods in England and Croatia. His latest ethnographic video, Urban Garden: Fighting for Life and Beauty, documents the community garden movement in New York City.

Abstract

Its Not your grandmothers old age anymore: Disruptive Demographics meets Globalization.

This presentation looks at the collision of  what Joseph F Coughlin, of MIT’s Age Lab calls “disruptive demographics,” with massive globalization and the impact of this on care environments for older adults. I will draw upon research in East Europe, Mexico, Japan and the US to explore some implications of this collision.  It will focus on two patterns emerging in this collision; the transformation of family and community systems and the shift toward a greater equality in generational and gender societal contracts. In this discussion I will try to make sense of the dancing elders of China, the unexpected emergence of elder self-help groups in Croatia, elder care robotics and the depression of the most family dependent migrant elders in North America.

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