Aging in World History by David G. Troyansky

Abstract

Reviewed by: Aging in World History by David G. Troyansky David Lipton Aging in World History. By david g. troyansky. New York: Routledge, 2016. 152 pp. $155.00 (cloth); $39.95 (paper); $34.95 (ebook). The elderly were apparently never the subject of a topically focused world history, until Aging in World History was published. As David Troyansky states, Western civilization has been the focus of earlier histories about old persons. This 152-page book provides an introduction to the history of aging, as well as a more general consideration of the causes and zeitgeists of historical eras in several regions of the world. Thus, Aging in World History may be useful for introductory survey courses in World History. Unlike some authors of popular books about aging in American history,3 Troyansky does not seek a single thematic explanation for all relevant human behavior. Instead, he offers objective presentations of the most important paradigms in each era and in each culture. Troyansky frequently explains how gender and class influenced the attitudes of younger generations toward the elderly. He offers many nuanced analyses that include gradients of both positive and negative attitudes for each culture in each era. Nevertheless, discussion of some generalized beliefs in African society fail to state the name of any specific ethnicity that articulated these ideas. Of the book’s thirteen chapters, only six are focused on the eras that predated the Enlightenment. Chapter 2 is an anecdotal globalized presentation of the Paleolithic and Neolithic Eras in Kenya, Botswana, Brazil, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, and the Arctic Region. Chapter 3 discusses the experiences of the aged in ancient outer Eurasian civilizations in Europe, the Middle East, India, and China. Chapter 4 offers similar geographical breadth in its treatment of the medieval and Renaissance eras. This chapter includes Korea and Japan, but it omits the Indian subcontinent. Chapter 5 describes varying western European attitudes toward the elderly during the Reformation and the scientific revolution, as well as pensions and segregation for the elderly. In subsequent chapters, global coverage is gradually resumed, organized by the chronology of European civilization’s colonial expansion and cultural diffusion from the 1500s through the present time. More pages are used for shorter intervals as the author approaches the present time. The concluding chapter considers theories about the future. [End Page 699] In the second half of the book, Troyansky includes anecdotal discussions about encounters between Western European and non-Western civilizations. One important theme is the diffusion of the concept of social welfare from Western Europe to the United States and to other nations throughout the world. However, this focus on diffusion might deemphasize creativity and independent agency by non-European civilizations during their colonial subjugation by European states. One particular strength of Aging in World History is its consideration of the elderly in underrepresented groups in the United States, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and women. Another strength is a crossdisciplinary global consideration of relevant issues in anthropology, sociology, economics, gerontology, political science, and religious studies. This integration may provide a model for research and composition in other subdisciplines of world history. The quality of presentation is also enhanced by the inclusion of frequent excerpts from original sources, including those written by elderly persons who described their own sociocultural experiences. Successor works might offer greater equality of coverage by including a broad range of materials produced by dominant and subaltern cultures throughout the world at each era in their respective history. Within outer Eurasia, coverage might be expanded for Southeast Asia. There also might be consideration of Zoroastrianism and Manicheanism, as well as the ancient Phoenician civilization. Likewise for pre-twen-tieth-century inner Eurasia, as well as sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere including pre-Aztec Mesoamerican civilizations. The impressive extent of the author’s research is apparent from the relatively long annotated bibliographies for this relatively short book. These bibliographies might be more useful for introductory level students, if only one citation were included in each paragraph, and if the bibliographical citations were always alphabetically sorted by using the authors’ surnames. Despite its shortcomings, Aging in World History is an important volume in that...