Introduction: The Presumptions of Retirement
Daniel Miller and Pauline Garvey

Chapter 1. Returns to (Non-)Retirement: Ageing Migrant Domestic Workers Linking Pasts and Futures
Megha Amrith

Chapter 2. Waiting to Retire in Rural Northeastern Brazil
Martin Fotta

Chapter 3. Downsizing, Rightsizing: Managing the Contours of Choice and Obligation in Retirement
Pauline Garvey

Chapter 4. New Expectations of Life in Retirement: Insights from Odisha, India
Annapurna Pandy

Chapter 5. The Power of Retirement
Alice Millar and Daniel Miller

Chapter 6. Retirement and Caring Masculinities in Later Life: Experiences of an Older Husband as Carer in Local Communities in Spain
Carlos Chirinos

Chapter 7. The Good Years, Having Time, and Time as a Gift: Experiences of Time in Retirement for People with Parkinson’s Disease in Australia and New Zealand
Imogen Spray

Afterword: Retiring Lives?
David Prendergast

Index

The Anthropology of Retirement

Life Beyond Work

Edited by Pauline Garvey and Daniel Miller

Afterward by David Prendergast

218 pages, bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-83695-037-0 Hb Published (July 2025)

eISBN 978-1-83695-036-3
web ISBN 978-1-83695-036-3

Details

“This is a unique contribution to the anthropology of work, adulthood and later life, bringing ethnographic insight to local understandings of retirement in ways that provide a ground for cross-national comparison.” • Jason Danely, Oxford Brookes University

As a result of growing life expectancy, the period of retirement is likely to surpass the entire period of working life in many countries. There is little acknowledgement that retirement is not an event but an extended period of life that unfolds over several decades. Experiences vary considerably across the globe, from areas where most people cannot afford to retire to places where a multitude of new possibilities are being developed for retirees. This book is an anthropological approach to consider life beyond retirement in a wide range of contexts and consequences.

Pauline Garvey is Professor in Anthropology at Maynooth University, the National University of Ireland. Her recent book, with Daniel Miller is entitled Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland: When Life Becomes Craft (UCL Press, 2021). Other works include Unpacking IKEA: Swedish Design for the Purchasing Masses (Routledge, 2018).

Daniel Miller is Professor of Anthropology at University College London and directs the Centre for Digital Anthropology. He was the leader for two major European Research Council five-year funded projects, Why We Post on the use and consequences of social media, and ASSA the Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing. His most recent books include The Good Enough Life (Polity Books, 2023) and Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland, with Pauline Garvey (UCL Press, 2021).

Series: Volume 12, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Sociology

Area:

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC026040 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Sociology/Social Theory; SOC013000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Gerontology

berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

The Anthropology of Retirement

Life Beyond Work

Edited by Pauline Garvey and Daniel Miller

Afterward by David Prendergast

Series: Volume 12, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Sociology

Area:

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Contents

The Anthropology of Retirement

Life Beyond Work

Edited by Pauline Garvey and Daniel Miller

Afterward by David Prendergast

Series: Volume 12, Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Sociology

Area: