Nov. 13, 12pm EST: "Rethinking Later Life in the Global South: The Promise of Cultural Gerontology."

[Cortney Rinker]

I wanted to share an event 12:00-1:00pm EST on Monday November 13, 2023. George Mason's Global Affairs Program and the Center for Social Science Research are hosting Dr. Tannistha Samanta from the FLAME School of Liberal Education. She will be giving a talk "Rethinking Later Life in the Global South: The Promise of Cultural Gerontology." Dr. Samanta is the co-Editor in Chief at the journal Anthropology & Aging. She received her PhD from the University of Maryland College Park. ABSTRACT: Recently, the plea to decolonize the university (or curriculum) has been an organizing theme for conferences, special issues of journals and talk series in the academy. Although energetic discussions around the role of the academy in post-colonial societies are gaining currency, gerontology’s reluctance to engage critically with the emancipatory politics of decolonization is surprising. In this talk, I will draw from my own work where I weave the cultural politics of aging with the market, family, and popular representations to argue (1) how the gerontological research and teaching in India are afflicted with the (neoliberal) obligation to amass and ‘measure’ gerontological ‘variables’ at large, and (2) how can we rethink gerontological education and research that are free of co-optation (either by the ‘global’ higher education economy or prevailing ‘local’ powers). Overall, the attempt will be to show the transformative promise of cultural gerontology in recognizing the ambivalent complexities of later life in South Asia. RSVP at: https://forms.gle/fSMocfHJkn7U1pj19. All are welcome to attend virtually so please feel free to forward as well! - Cortney Hughes Rinker (Director of the Global Affairs Program & Associate Professor of Anthropology, George Mason University)