Developing an Aging Services Agenda: Applied Anthropology's Contribution to Planning and Development in a Community Foundation

Abstract

Gerontology is an interdisciplinary field, bringing together researchers from vastly different orientations to study a complex human process. Often, the anthropologist is one member of a multidisciplinary team, and must address issues relevant to interdisciplinary research. This article describes our work on the Aging in Chicago Project, an interdisciplinary effort designed to comprehensively describe and evaluate the status of older people in Chicago. Through this experience we confronted several important tasks that we must tackle if we wish to effectively create and maintain viable roles for anthropologists in the world of aging research. These tasks include translating the ethnographic approach to other disciplines, integrating ethnographic findings with other types of data, and mediating the needs of multiple stakeholders to produce useful outcomes.