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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Population Aging As The Social Body In Representation And Real Life, Alexandra Crampton
Population Aging As The Social Body In Representation And Real Life, Alexandra Crampton
Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications
This article uses three levels of body analysis as presented by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock to compare old age as a construct in population aging discourse with research on lived experience of people aging in the United States and Ghana. I first describe how demographers construct social bodies as becoming “gray” through population statistics and how policy makers then use dependency ratios to rationalize intervention on behalf of older adults in the body-politic. The construction of old age within this discourse is then compared with ethnographic research that suggests this construct leaves out much of the lived experience familiar …
No Peace In The House: Witchcraft Accusations As An "Old Woman's Problem" In Ghana, Alexandra Crampton
No Peace In The House: Witchcraft Accusations As An "Old Woman's Problem" In Ghana, Alexandra Crampton
Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications
In Ghana, older women may be marginalized, abused, and even killed as witches. Media accounts imply this is common practice, mainly through stories of “witches camps” to which the accused may flee. Anthropological literature on aging and on witchcraft, however, suggests that this focus exaggerates and misinterprets the problem. This article presents a literature review and exploratory data on elder advocacy and rights intervention on behalf of accused witches in Ghana to help answer the question of how witchcraft accusations become an older woman’s problem in the context of aging and elder advocacy work. The ineffectiveness of rights based and …