When youth shake off their rural roots and middle-aged people migrate for economic opportunities, what happens to the grandparents left at home? Linked Lives provides readers with intimate glimpses into homes in a Sri Lankan Buddhist village, where elders wisely use their moral authority and their control over valuable property to assure that they receive both physical and spiritual care when they need it. The care work that grandparents do for grandchildren allows labor migration and contributes to the overall well-being of the extended family. The book considers the efforts migrant workers make to build and buy houses and the ways those rooms and walls constrain social activities. It outlines the strategies elders employ to age in place, and the alternatives they face in local old folks’ homes. Based on ethnographic work done over a decade, Michele Gamburd shows how elders face the challenges of a rapidly globalizing world.

"Have you ever had a friend who knew all your secrets? A friend that you could call and pick up the converstion from wherever you left off, whether it'd been a day or a decade since the last time you spoke? If so, you'll love reading Linked Lives. This riveting story takes readers on a forty-year journey with two women facing incredible adversity, poverty, family struggles, losses through illness and death as well as betrayals in love. Their linked lives create a rock-solid friendship never to be forgotten."--Back cover.

Table of contents

This volume engages the interface between the development of human lives and social relational networks. It focuses on the integration of two subfields of sociology/social science--the life course and social networks. Research practitioners studying social networks typically focus on social structure or social organization, ignoring the complex lives of the people in those networks. At the same time, life course researchers tend to focus on individual lives without necessarily studying the contexts of social relationships in which lives are embedded and “linked” to one another through social networks. These patterns are changing and this book creates an audience of researchers who will better integrate the two subfields. It covers the role of social networks across the life span, from childhood and adolescence, to midlife, through old age.

This volume reflects the emergence of ageing as a global concern, including chapters by international scholars from Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America. It provides a comprehensive overview of key trends and issues in the field, drawing upon the full range of social science disciplines. The Handbook is organized into five parts, each exploring different aspects of research into social aspects of ageing: * Disciplinary overviews: summaries of findings from key disciplinary areas within social gerontology * Social relationships and social differences: topics include: social inequality, gender and ageing, the role of religion, inter-generational ties, social networks, and friendships in later life. * Individual characteristics and change in later life: chapters in this section examine different aspects of individual aging, including self and identity, cognitive processes, and biosocial interactions and their impact on physical and psychological aging. * Comparative perspectives and cultural innovations: topics in this section include: ageing and development, ageing in a global context, migration, and cross-cultural perspectives on grandparenthood. * Policy issues: The final section examines some of the main policy concerns affecting older people across the world. Topics include: developments in social policy, long-term care, technology and older people, end of life issues, work and retirement, crime and older people, and the politics of old age. This will be essential reading for all students, researchers and policy-makers concerned with the major issues influencing the lives of older people across the globe.