On 6 December 2022 Iza Kavedžija talks about her book Making meaningful lives. This online book talk is part of the webinar series
Unfolding Finitudes: Current Ethnographies of Aging, Dying and End-of-Life Care. Participation is free, but please register to receive the zoom link in advance.
Register for the online book talk Making meaningful lives
About the book
What makes for a meaningful life? In the Japanese context, the concept of ikigai provides a clue. Translated as “that which makes one’s life worth living,” ikigai has also come to mean that which gives a person happiness. In Japan, where the demographic cohort of elderly citizens is growing, and new modes of living and relationships are revising traditional multigenerational family structures, the elderly experience of ikigai is considered a public health concern. Without a relevant model for meaningful and joyful older age, the increasing older population of Japan must create new cultural forms that center the ikigai that comes from old age.
Dr. Iza Kavedžija’s Making Meaningful Lives: Tales from an Aging Japan is a rich anthropological account of the lives and concerns of older Japanese women and men. Kavedžija offers an intimate narrative analysis of the existential concerns of her active, independent subjects, based on years of ethnographic fieldwork at two community centres in Osaka. The elderly residents of these communities, both alone and in groups, use humour, conversation, and storytelling to make sense of their lives and shifting ikigai.
About the talk
The online webinar takes place on 6 December 2022 from 16:00 – 17:30 CEST. More information can be found on the university website.