______________________
University of Kentucky
Department of Anthropology
211 Lafferty Hall
Lexington, KY 40506
Phone: 859-257-2710
Fax: 859-323-1959
Send comments or suggestions about this website to webmaster.
Last update: 10/17/01

John van Willigen
Professor

My research focuses on comparative social aging and has often used analytical tools from network studies. My work is informed by theories of political ecology and exchange. I have done research in rural Kentucky focused on social relationships of older people. This work, reported in Gettin' Some Age on Me: A Study of Social Organization of Older People in a Rural American Community, involved a combination of cross-sectional analysis of data derived from a sample of older men and women in a rural Kentucky county, ethnographic data based on participant observation, and key informant interviewing and oral history. The resulting heavily contextualized account clarifies factors that are associated with social integration of older people in a rural setting.

An expanded version of this approach was used in a study done in a neighborhood in Delhi, India. In this setting, N.K. Chadha and I examined the relationship between power (i.e. control of household assets), gender, subjective health, social network and life satisfaction. This has been published as Social Aging in a Delhi Neighborhood.

Ongoing research, using an expanded life course perspective, will examine various personal and household practices under the rubric "the quest for well-being" in the context of contemporary life in India. This work will be done in an urban middle-class neighborhood in Delhi.

In addition to my work on social aging I have a research interest in aspects of rural life in Kentucky which grew out of my earlier rural aging studies. This interest has been expressed in a book entitled Tobacco Culture: Farming Kentucky's Burley Belt. Currently I am working on a project focused on the oral history of farm life in Kentucky during the mid-20th Century.

I was awarded a Chancellor's Teaching Award in the tenured division and have published nine books and over forty articles and book chapters.

Selected Publications:

  • Gettin' Some Age on Me: A Study of Social Organization of Older People in a Rural American Community, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 1998
  • Social Aging in a Delhi Neighborhood
  • Tobacco Culture: Farming Kentucky's Burley Belt, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 1998
  • van Willigen, J., Chadha, N.K., & Kedia, S. (1995). Personal networks and sacred texts: Social aging in Delhi, India. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, 10:3, 175-198.
  • Chadha, N.K. & van Willigen, J. (1996). The life scale: The development of a measure of successful aging. Indian Journal of Gerontology, 9:3&4, 83-90.
  • van Willigen, J., Chadha, N.K., & Kedia, S. (1996). Personal networks of older people in a Delhi neighborhood: Power and the process of disengagement. Indian Journal of Social Work, 57:3, 414-428.
  • van Willigen, J., Chadha, N.K., & Kedia, S. (1996). Power and social engagement: A study of social aging in a Delhi neighborhood. Aging and Society, 6:1 & 2, 33-47.
  • van Willigen, J., Chadha, N.K., & Kedia, S. (1996). Late life changes in social networks and disengagement: Perspectives from a Delhi neighbourhood. Research and Development Journal of Help Age India, 2:3