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This article is about older women and the way hypertension is linked to their life in a favela, a "shantytown", in Rio de Janeiro. Inspired by Foucault, I suggest calling this complex phenomenon 'heterotopic illness'. By calling attention to the importance of place for understanding certain illnesses, the limited usefulness of some public health prevention campaigns is shown. Since hypertension can be considered a "disease of aging", it will be argued that some place-related stressors often have a greater impact on seniors than they have on younger adults.

Cet article vise à problématiser le « mouvement pour la personne » dans le domaine des soins de la maladie d'Alzheimer. L'histoire récente de ce mouvement, lequel viendrait sauver « la personne à l'intérieur », l'inscrit dans une opposition explicite à l'approche biomédicale. On juge que cette dernière nie la personne en mettant l'accent sur la cognition, la rationalité, la réflexivité et l'autonomie. J'avance dans cet article que la notion changeante de personne, dans le domaine des soins de la maladie d'Alzheimer et d'autres formes de démence, prolonge la vie dans la vie, ce qui est relié à la « mort sociale » dont traitent depuis longtemps les sciences sociales. Les pratiques investissant la personne peuvent être comprises comme des négociations culturelles entourant la mort bio-sociale. Ces pratiques reposent sur un sens commun qui n'est pas questionné, et elles ne sont pas exemptes de limites.

This article discusses the two major groups of Alzheimer medications, which are hotly debated in the specialized literature because of their doubtful efficacy. Examining this issue under the rubric of an `anthropology of uncertainty,' this article seeks to address the question: how do doctors prescribe medications given tensions created by uncertainty? A partial answer is drawn from research conducted in Brazil with local psychogeriatricians, which has documented a high degree of certainty regarding Alzheimer drugs and their benefits. I argue that one reason for this certainty is that `efficacy' has become increasingly non-specific in Alzheimer's disease through the broadening of outcome measures in clinical trials. While such measures previously focused on cognitive symptoms, they now encompass concepts such as functionality, quality of life and activities of daily living. The certainty of the Brazilian psychogeriatricians is further buttressed by three interacting elements: (i) the influence of the pharmaceutical industry; (ii) long-standing arguments for including non-cognitive symptoms in dementia care and research; and (iii) a specific discourse found in geriatrics and gerontology, which recognizes `the person beyond cognition.'

Out of the shadows of history and memory : personal family narratives as intimate ethnography /Alisse Waterston and Barbara Rylko-Bauer --When things get personal : secrecy, intimacy, and the production of experience in fieldwork /Anne M. Lovell --The scene : shadowing the real /Vincent Crapanzano --Transmutation of sensibilities : empathy, intuition, revelation /Thomas J. Csordas --Shining a light into the shadow of death : terminal care discourse and practice in the late 20th century /Jason Szabo --The hidden side of the moon, or, "Lifiting out" in ethnographies /Annette Leibing.

Cultural responses to most illnesses differ; dementia is no exception. These responses, together with a society's attitudes toward its elderly population, affect the frequency of dementia-related diagnoses and the nature of treatment. Bringing together essays by nineteen respected scholars, this unique volume approaches the subject from a variety of angles, exploring the historical, psychological, and philosophical implications of dementia. Based on solid ethnographic fieldwork, the essays employ a cross-cultural perspective and focus on questions of age, mind, voice, self, loss, temporality, memory, and affect. Taken together, the essays make four important and interrelated contributions to our understanding of the mental status of the elderly. First, cross-cultural data show the extent to which the aging process, while biologically influenced, is also very much culturally constructed. Second, detailed ethnographic reports raise questions about the behavioral criteria used by health care professionals and laymen for defining the elderly as demented. Third, case studies show how a diagnosis affects a patient's treatment in both clinical and familial settings.; Finally, the collection highlights the gap that separates current biological understandings of aging from its cultural meanings. As Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia continue to command an ever-increasing amount of attention in medicine and psychology, this book will be essential reading for anthropologists, social scientists, and health care professionals

Cultural responses to most illnesses differ; dementia is no exception. These responses, together with a society's attitudes toward its elderly population, affect the frequency of dementia-related diagnoses and the nature of treatment. Bringing together essays by nineteen respected scholars, this unique volume approaches the subject from a variety of angles, exploring the historical, psychological, and philosophical implications of dementia. Based on solid ethnographic fieldwork, the essays employ a cross-cultural perspective and focus on questions of age, mind, voice, self, loss, temporality, memory, and affect. Taken together, the essays make four important and interrelated contributions to our understanding of the mental status of the elderly. First, cross-cultural data show the extent to which the aging process, while biologically influenced, is also very much culturally constructed. Second, detailed ethnographic reports raise questions about the behavioral criteria used by health care professionals and laymen for defining the elderly as demented. Third, case studies show how a diagnosis affects a patient's treatment in both clinical and familial settings.; Finally, the collection highlights the gap that separates current biological understandings of aging from its cultural meanings. As Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia continue to command an ever-increasing amount of attention in medicine and psychology, this book will be essential reading for anthropologists, social scientists, and health care professionals.

This article compares health promotion attitudes towards prostate cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Our aim is to demonstrate that these two apparently distinct conditions of the aging body – one affecting the male reproductive system, the other primarily the brain – are addressed in similar fashion in recent public health activities because of a growing emphasis on a 'cardiovascular logic'. We suggest that this is a form of reductionism, and argue that it leaves us with a dangerous paradox: while re-transcending, at least partially, the conceptual separation of body and brain, it clouds much-needed discussion and research, such as contingent issues of socio-economic and socio-cultural disease disparities.