Publications
Books
(ongoing series) Global Perspectives on Aging. (Rutgers University Press). - editor book series
NOTE: If you are interested in contributing to this series, please contact Sarah Lamb
(2022) Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility. (U of California Press). - author
Open Access - Order your free copy here through UC Press's Open Access Luminos link above
(2017) Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives. (Rutgers University Press). - editor & contributor
(2009) Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Families in India and Abroad (Indiana U Press). - author
(2002/2009) Everyday Life in South Asia. (Indiana University Press). co-editor with Diane Mines
(2000) White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender, and Body in India. (U of California Press). - author
Selected Book Chapters
(2026) “Beyond the view of the West: Ageing and anthropology” In Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. (Routledge).
(2022) "Freedom to Choose? Singlehood, Gender, and Sexuality in India." In Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World. (Rutgers University Press).
(2020) “Never-Married Women in India: Gendered Life Courses, Desires, and Identities in Flux.” In Waithood: Gender, Education, and Global Delays in Marriage and Childbearing. (Berghahn Books).
(2020) “You Don’t Have to Act or Feel Old: Successful Aging as a U.S. Cultural Project” & “Old Age Homes, Love, and Other New Cultures of Aging in Middle-Class India.” In The Cultural Context of Aging. (4th Edition, Praeger).
(2017) “Ageless Aging or Meaningful Decline? Aspirations of Aging and Dying in the United States and India” and “Introduction: Successful Aging as a Twenty-first-Century Obsession” (with Jessica Robbins-Ruszkowski and Anna Corwin). In Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives. Rutgers University Press.
(2016) “Traveling Institutions as Transnational Aging: The Old-Age Home as Idea and Practice in India”. In Transnational Aging: Current Insights and Future Challenges (Routledge).
(2008) "The Remaking of Aging among Indian Americans." In Indian Diaspora: Voices of the Diasporic Elders in Five Countries (Sense Publishers).
(2005) “The Politics of Dirt and Gender: Body Techniques in Bengali India.” In Dirt, Undress and Difference. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Selected Articles
(2025). Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture: Successful aging’s global moment: Visions and dilemmas of aging well. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 15(1), 8–25. https://doi.org/10.1086/734825
(co-author with Goswami, N.) (2024). Healthy aging, self-care, and choice in India: Class-based engagements with globally circulating ideologies. Journal of Aging Studies, 68, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101194
(2023). Who wants to have an aged self if to age is so bad? Ageless and aged selves as cultural constructs. Anthropology & Aging, 44(1), 107–110. https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2023.479
(2020). On vulnerability, resilience, and age: Older Americans reflect on the pandemic. Anthropology & Aging, 41(2), 177–186.
(2019). Interrogating healthy/successful aging: An anthropologist’s lens. General Anthropology, 26(2), 1–9.
(2019). Aging, ambivalent modernities, and the pursuit of value in India. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 346–360.
(2019). On being (not) old: Agency, self-care, and life-course aspirations in the United States. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 33(2), 263–281. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12498
(2018). Being single in India: Gendered identities, class mobilities, and personhoods in flux. Ethos, 46(1), 49–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12193
(2014). Permanent personhood or meaningful decline? Toward a critical anthropology of successful aging. Journal of Aging Studies, 29, 41–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2013.12.006
(2013). In/dependence, intergenerational uncertainty, and the ambivalent state: Perceptions of old age security in India. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 36(1), 65–78.
(2010). Rethinking the generation gap: Age and agency in middle-class Kolkata. Journal of Aging, Humanities, and the Arts, 4(2), 83–97.
(2008) Permanent personhood or meaningful decline? Toward a critical anthropology of successful aging. Journal of Aging Studies, 29, 41–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2013.12.006
(2005). Cultural and moral values surrounding care and (in)dependence in late life: Reflections from India in an era of global modernity. Journal of Long Term Home Health Care, 6(2), 80–89. https://doi.org/10.1891/cmaj.6.2.80
(2002). Intimacy in a transnational era: The remaking of aging among Indian Americans. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 11(3), 299–330.
(2001). Being a widow and other life stories: The interplay between lives and words. Anthropology and Humanism, 26(1), 16–34.
(1999). Aging, gender, and widowhood: Perspectives from rural West Bengal. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 33(3), 541–570.
(1997). The making and unmaking of persons: Notes on aging and gender in North India. Ethos, 25(3), 279–302.