Announcement

Social Science Baha

invites you to its
Lecture Series CXV

Sienna R. Craig
on
Aging, Care, and Place
Himalayan Elders in an Era of Migration

3 pm | 13 December 2024 (Friday) | Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka, Lalitpur

In many places on this planet, we are getting older. Global population aging is increasing in intensity and the structures human communities have relied upon for generations to care for the elderly are cracking and shifting, for many reasons. We must re-frame our notions of what successful aging, aging in place, and elder care can mean in as culturally diverse a way as possible. In recognition of this pervasive reality and the attendant social issues it provokes, this talk emerges from an ongoing three-year project with Himalayan communities to ask: How do individuals, families, communities, and institutions adapt to demographic and socioeconomic changes to allow people to age in a culturally appropriate manner? What does “successful” aging entail in an era of unprecedented migration? This question is a central concern of our interlocutors and partners in this work: people from Nubri, Tsum, and Mustang, Nepal who live between Nepal and North America. This talk will discuss ongoing research, including using the practice of pilgrimage as an ethnographic method and engaging with younger generations of Himalayan New Yorkers to reflect on how they interact with their grandparents and other elders—experiences of intergenerational connection and disconnection.

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Sienna R. Craig is the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. She is a medical and cultural anthropologist whose relationships with Himalayan and Tibetan communities spans three decades and circles between Asia and North America. Her research focuses on migration and social change, Asian medicines, global health, women’s health, and aging.

Professor Craig is the author of The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives Between Nepal and New York (University of Washington Press, 2020), Mustang in Black and White, with photographer Kevin Bubriski (Vajra Publications, 2018), Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine (University of California Press, 2012) and Horses Like Lightning: A Story of Passage through the Himalayas (Wisdom Publications, 2008), among other publications.

Professor Craig enjoys writing across genres and has published poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, flash ethnography, and children’s literature in addition to scholarly works. Craig’s scholarship has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, among other sources. From 2012-2017 she served as co-editor of HIMALAYA, Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies. She is an Executive Council member of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies (ANHS) and the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM). 

This lecture has been organised in collaboration withthe Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies (ANHS) Kathmandu Center.

This is a public lecture and admission is free and open to all. Seating is first-come-first-served.