Generations in Touch

Leng Leng Thang is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore. She is the coeditor of Old Challenges, New Strategies?: Women, Work, and Family in Contemporary Asia.

Leng Leng Thang's portrait of an age-integrated home for the elderly with an attached nursery school offers both an ironic view of the paradoxes of aging and a potential at least for comfort, if not dignity.... Thang's work is a very strong contribution to Japanese studies, cross-cultural gerontology, and anthropology of modern institutions. It reads well and might act as a text in a college or graduate-school course in these fields.... Thang's work presents a balanced view, however hopeful she obviously is that such an establishment might provide a good alternative to family care.(The Journal of Asian Studies) The global ageing of society and the future patterns of intergenerational relations between young and old, are of great significance if we are to develop a more socially inclusive and integrated society. Generations in Touch provides an excellent and empirically rich eastern perspective on these issues, furthering our knowledge and understanding of the benefits to be gained from developing... a deliberate social policy of linking older and younger people in appropriate settings. Leng Leng Thang has written a readable, thoughtful and critically stimulating ethnography that examines the 'reengagement' of older and younger people in the context of an intergenerational social welfare institution.... This book is extremely well timed and should be of significant interest to policy makers, practitioners and academics alike.(Ageing and Society)