Sarah Lamb (born 6 February 1960) is an American culturalanthropologist known for her writings on aging. She is Professor of Anthropology and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanistic Social Sciences atBrandeis University inWaltham, Massachusetts.[1]
She studies the ways people construct their social-cultural worlds and identities, particularly surrounding age, gender, the body, family, religion, and nation.
Lamb is the author of several books, includingWhite Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender, and Body in North India (UC Press),Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Families in India and Abroad (Indiana U Press), Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility (UC Press), and editor of Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives (Rutgers U Press andEveryday Life in South Asia (Indiana U Press, in two editions)
Lamb was born and grew up inBerkeley, California to Sharon Rowell and distinguished American linguistSydney Lamb. She completed a BA in Religious Studies with honors at Brown University in 1982.[2] Then, she completed an MA (1985) and PhD (1993) in Anthropology at theUniversity of Chicago. Her dissertation, titled "Growing in the Net ofMaya: Persons, Gender and Life Processes in a Bengali Society," received the Saller Prize awarded each year to the most outstanding dissertation in the social sciences at the University of Chicago.[3][4]
Lamb has authored numerous books and articles based on ethnographic research in both India and the United States. Her work examines aging, gender, families, ethical strivings,[5] and understandings of personhood. Through participant-observation, fieldwork and interviewing, Lamb probes the ways people construct their social-cultural worlds and identities, with particular attention to aging, gender, body, family, and moral life. She critically analyzes everyday life practices and experiences, medical and legal discourses, and taken-for-granted assumptions to understand how subjectivities and social-cultural worlds are produced. Lamb's current Carnegie-funded project examines "successful aging" as a contemporary obsession and cultural-biopolitical project, prevailing in North America and with diverse instantiations around the globe.[6]
As a graduate student, Lamb conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in India. She spent a year collecting narratives and life histories of Bengali widows in 1985 and returned to West Bengal in 1989 for her dissertation fieldwork on aging, gender, and the making and unmaking of persons. Her early research was primarily based in a large Bengali village, with other work in Kolkata (thenCalcutta) and places of pilgrimage. Lamb also pursued advanced language studies at theAmerican Institute of Indian Studies, Kolkata. Her first book, White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender and Body in North India, was based on this work.[2]
Between 1993 and 2004, Lamb conducted field research in San Francisco and Boston,[7] examining the experiences of older immigrants from India and their families as they think about aging practices and creatively combine and rework the ideas, values, images, and lifeways comprising what they perceive to be "India" and "America." In 2003 and 2006, Lamb returned to India to conduct fieldwork inKolkata andNew Delhi on aging and understandings ofmodernity in cosmopolitan India, including the surge of old age homes, increasing numbers of elderly living alone, and the transnational dispersal of families. This work led to her next book,Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Families in India and Abroad.
Starting in 2013, Lamb worked on two main projects, one located in India and one in the United States. In India, she explored the narratives and experiences of never-married single women. Through this work, she contributed to studies of personhood and social transformations, and published her third book, Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility (UC Press).[8] In the United States, she conducted fieldwork investigating the narratives of healthy and successful aging, analyzig public health, medical, and popular media, and conducted interviews with Americans inMassachusetts,California, and theUS South.[7] This project was complemented by her comparative fieldwork in India.
Lamb held a postdoctoral fellowship from 1993 to 1995 in sociocultural gerontology at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Anthropology Program following her PhD. She transitioned to Brandeis University as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in 1995. At Brandeis, she served as the Head of Division of Social Sciences (2013–2018), Chair of the Anthropology Department (July 2007 – June 2011; July 2022 – June 2024, July 2025-June 2026), and Chair of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies (2019–2020). She is currently Professor of Anthropology and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanistic Social Sciences at Brandeis University[9]
At Brandeis University, Lamb mentors both undergraduate and graduate students, and teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses that focus on Personhood, Gender, Aging, Transnationalism, South Asian cultures, Modernity, Medical Anthropology, and related topics.[10]
Lamb is the founding editor of theRutgers University Press series Global Perspectives on Aging. Lamb also serves on the editorial boards of several journals, includingAging & Anthropology,Medical Anthropology Quarterly,Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, andJournal of the Indian Anthropological Society.
2022: 58th Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture, Department of Anthropology, University of Rochester: "Successful Aging's Global Moment: Visions and Dilemmas of Aging Well."[11][12]
2005. Cultural and Moral Values Surrounding Care and (In)Dependence in Late Life: Reflections from India in an Era of Global Modernity.Journal of Long Term Home Health Care 6(2):80-89. DOI: 10.1891/cmaj.6.2.80
2014. Permanent Personhood or Meaningful Decline? Toward a Critical Anthropology of Successful Aging.Journal of Aging Studies 29: 41-52. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2013.12.006
2015. Beyond the View of the West: Ageing and Anthropology. InCultural Handbook of Gerontology, 1st edition. Julia Twigg and Wendy Martin, eds. pp. 37–44. New York: Routledge.
2019. On Being (Not) Old: Agency, Self-Care, and Life-Course Aspirations in the United States.Medical Anthropology Quarterly 33(2): 263-281. doi: 10.1111/maq.12498
2021. Freedom to Choose? Singlehood, Gender, and Sexuality in India. InOpting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World, Joanna Davidson and Dinah Hannaford, eds. Rutgers University Press.
