Ageing without senescence: A critical absence in social gerontology?

This paper addresses the absence of the term 'senescence' in recent social science literature on ageing. The significance of this omission is considered in light of the emerging standpoint of gero-science, which argues that the central processes defining ageing are concerned with the rising probability of functional decline, development of degenerative disease and death. From this perspective, the separation of ageing and senescence sustains the myth that there exist forms of ageing that are exempt from senescence. The persistence of this myth underlies ageing studies, the sociology of later life and most social gerontology. While there have been undoubted benefits arising from this bracketing out of senescence, the argument of this paper is that the continuing advances associated with this standpoint are outweighed by the need to seriously engage with the consequences of contemporary societal ageing and the centrality of the processes of senescence in establishing an adequate understanding of ageing, its correlates and contingencies and its personal and social consequences.

Is ageism an oppression?

The concept of ageism as oppression has become an important point of reference in contemporary gerontology. Apart from its giving substance to the negative experiences impacting on older people, the idea of ageism as oppression is used in many different contexts, with different meanings. In this paper we argue that the positioning of ageism as oppression, rather than constituting a deepening of gerontological focus, seems to serve as a way of connecting those using it with other social movements for whom oppression and its overcoming have been critical to their historical development. In and of itself, we argue, ageism as oppression has little instrumental value in effecting change over and above that associated with the identification of discrimination experienced by older people in various settings. Furthermore, it risks reinforcing a homogenized perspective of later life that masks the complex and contradictory position that later life occupies in most aging societies.

Age, subjectivity and the concept of subjective age: A critique.

This paper presents a critique and proposes a reformulation of the concept of subjective age. It questions the nature of 'subjectivity' used in framing the concept and the consequent failure to distinguish between 'subjectivity' and 'self-identity'. I argue that age is not easily framed as a phenomenal (for-me) experience and that it is at least questionable whether aging or agedness possess what might be termed a 'first-person' subjectivity. What is usually referred to as 'subjective age' can be better understood as an aspect of an individual's self-categorisation or self-schema, derived less from its experiential aspect than from its widespread use as an identifier of people's social being - their they-self. Understood as part of a person's self-schema, 'subjective age' is less a subjective than an inter-subjective construct, reflecting one's place in society. Many of the correlates and consequences of 'subjective age' reflect a more general self-evaluation, derived from the network of inter-subjective relations in both system and life world experience, rather than the phenomenal experiences of embodied age. Integrating research on self-categorisation and social identity with 'self-perceived' age offers a clearer conceptual base from which to study subjective age, leaving the thornier question of the subjectivity of age to students of aging in the humanities and human sciences.

Aging as Otherness: Revisiting Simone de Beauvoir's Old Age.

Aging has been given short shrift as a topic in philosophy. The aim of this article is to redress this neglect by revisiting some of the key philosophical issues in Simone de Beauvoir's book, Old Age. In her notion of old age's unrealizability, its impossibility of fully embodying a subject position, and the role played by the other in denying such subjectivity, she draws upon the work of both Heidegger and Sartre. The dilemma she repeatedly draws attention to, of always seeming to age in ways other than as one's self, raises the question of whether any view of aging as an authentic subjectivity may be no more than, in Heidegger's words, a "chimerical undertaking." In examining how the concepts of bad faith and inauthenticity are used by Heidegger and Sartre, the article concludes that for both these writers, an authentic subject position can be maintained in later life, without ending up as the otherwise inauthentic subject of others' collective imaginary of "a good age."

Values across Ages.

Ending Midlife Bias: New Values for Old Age, by Nancy Jecker, addresses what she sees as Western society's overvaluing of autonomy and undervaluing of dignity, a bias that she sees as particularly unsuited to old age. While she makes a strong case, two main problems challenge her approach. First, she characterizes later life by the diseases and disabilities associated with it, compressing its ever-expanding social space into a narrow location where need trumps desire, and comfort companionship. Second, she considers few other values beyond the antagonism between being granted autonomy and being granted dignity. Human values extend beyond such pairing - and beyond the confines of any particular phase or stage of life. It is as if the author sees old age as an endless succession of Sundays, punctured by dull but respectful visits from grandchildren and great grandchildren. Later life lasts more than one day and deserves more than one value.

Bourdieu's forms of capital and the stratification of later life.

This paper outlines the case for applying Bourdieu's writing on 'forms of capital' to the explication of the social divisions of later life. Much of the writing about class in later life pivots on the distinction between working and non-working life. Broadening the focus towards a more Bourdieusian conceptualisation of forms of capital offers a greater potential to delineate and account for social stratification in later life than that accorded by either treating older retired people as a more or less homogenously marginal class or by applying class analyses to later life based on the relations of capital and labour. The paper begins with an outline of Bourdieu's account of the three main forms of capital and their symbolic representation. This is followed by consideration of the various critiques that have been made of Bourdieu's formulation of his capitals alongside various elaborations and re-formulations. Finally various potential avenues are explored to illustrate how forms of capital may be realised in later life and the role they may play in determining its social stratification. Examples range from the financial capital represented by home ownership to the investment in embodied cultural capital made by the various technologies of the self that characterise third age cultures.

Unacknowledged distinctions: Corporeality versus embodiment in later life.

The focus upon the body in the social sciences has had a growing influence in recent years on aging studies. Various terms have been used to explore the relationship between the body and society, of which 'corporeality' and 'embodiment' have taken pride of place. In this paper, we present the case for drawing a clear distinction between these two terms and the consequences that follow from it for the study of the body in social and cultural gerontology. Central to this distinction is the place of social agency. Corporeality, we suggest, refers to the role of the body as a set of structures whose identity and meaning is mediated by culture and society. Embodiment, in contrast, refers to the processes by which social actors realise distinction, identity and lifestyle through the medium of the body. Making this distinction sharpens the difference between studies that address self and others' reactions to physical changes in bodily function attributable to aging and/or age associated illness and impairment and studies that focus on the 'performance' of aging and the contested realisations of identity and lifestyle in later life. While the latter primarily reflects the concerns of 'third age' studies the former addresses the concerns more directly associated with 'fourth age' studies.

Suffering: The darker side of ageing.

Much of the literature on ageing is presaged upon a model of advocacy that seeks to combat what is seen as the negative stereotyping of old age and old people. One consequence is that ageing studies has difficulty in confronting the darker side of ageing except in so far as age associated disability and distress can be attributed to extrinsic disadvantage, such as low income, poor housing and inadequate services. The pain and suffering associated with age itself tend to be neglected as subject experiences. This paper seeks to shed some light on these topics, considered under the general heading of 'suffering'. Suffering can be viewed from the perspective of moral philosophy of medicine and of the social sciences. Serving as a witness to suffering has been proposed as the basis for an ethics of human dignity and as a call upon the collective moral agency of the community. Whether or not one accepts such an ethical viewpoint, it seems important for students of ageing to acknowledge document and explore the place of suffering in later life.

Ageing, dementia and the social mind: past, present and future perspectives.

Accompanying the ageing of contemporary ageing societies is an increase in age associated morbidity, with dementia having an important impact. Mental frailty in later life is a source of fear for many and a major policy concern to all those concerned with health and welfare services. This introduction to the special issue on 'Ageing, dementia and the social mind' situates the selected papers within the context of debates about dementia and its social relations. In particular it draws attention to the importance of the social imaginary of the fourth age and what this means for the issue of personhood, care, social representations of dementia and its social contextualisation. The papers illuminating these themes draw on a variety of disciplines and approaches; from the social sciences to the humanities and from the theoretical to the empirical in order to help orientate future researchers to the complexities of dementia and the social and cultural matrix in which it exists. This paper provides an introduction to the potential for a more extended sociology of dementia; one which could combine the insights from medical sociology with the concerns of social gerontology.

Connecting Life Span Development with the Sociology of the Life Course: A New Direction.

The life course has become a topic of growing interest within the social sciences. Attempts to link this sub-discipline with life span developmental psychology have been called for but with little sign of success. In this paper, we seek to address three interlinked issues concerning the potential for a more productive interchange between life course sociology and life span psychology. The first is to try to account for the failure of these two sub-disciplines to achieve any deepening engagement with each other, despite the long-expressed desirability of that goal; the second is to draw attention to the scope for enriching the sociology of the life course through Erik Erikson's model of life span development; and the last is the potential for linking Eriksonian theory with current debates within mainstream sociology about the processes involved in 'individualisation' and 'self-reflexivity' as an alternative entry point to bring together these two fields of work.

Interrogating personhood and dementia.

OBJECTIVES: To interrogate the concept of personhood and its application to care practices for people with dementia. METHOD: We outline the work of Tom Kitwood on personhood and relate this to conceptualisations of personhood in metaphysics and in moral philosophy. RESULTS: The philosophical concept of personhood has a long history. The metaphysical tradition examines the necessary and sufficient qualities that make up personhood such as agency, consciousness, identity, rationality and second-order reflexivity. Alternative viewpoints treat personhood as a matter of degree rather than as a superordinate category. Within moral philosophy personhood is treated as a moral status applicable to some or to all human beings. CONCLUSION: In the light of the multiple meanings attached to the term in both metaphysics and moral philosophy, personhood is a relatively unhelpful concept to act as the foundation for developing models and standards of care for people with dementia. Care, we suggest, should concentrate less on ambiguous and somewhat abstract terms such as personhood and focus instead on supporting people's existing capabilities, while minimising the harmful consequences of their incapacities.

Revisionist or simply wrong? A response to Armstrong's article on chronic illness.

This article is a response to David Armstrong's recent, revisionist account of the epidemiological transition which he claims replaced earlier discourses of ageing with new discourses of chronic disease. We argue (i) that he misrepresents a key element in Omran's account of the epidemiological transition, namely the decline in infant, child and maternal mortality; (ii) that he fails to acknowledge debates going back centuries in Western medicine over the distinctions between natural and accidental death and between endogenous and extrinsic causes of ageing and (iii) that he misrepresents the growth of medical interest in the everyday illnesses of old age over the course of the 20th century as a discourse of suppression rather than a process of inclusion. While we would acknowledge that the chronic illnesses of today are different from those of the past, this amounts to something more than the changing semantics of senility.

The fourth age and the concept of a 'social imaginary': A theoretical excursus.

This paper explores the idea of the 'fourth age' as a form of social imaginary. During the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, the cultural framing of old age and its modern institutionalisation within society began to lose some of its former chronological coherence. The 'pre-modern' distinction made between the status of 'the elder' and the state of 'senility' has re-emerged in the 'late modern' distinction between the 'third' and the 'fourth' age. The centuries-old distaste for and fear of old age as 'senility' has been compounded by the growing medicalization of later life, the emergence and expansion of competing narratives associated with the third age, and the progressive 'densification' of the disabilities within the older institutionalised population. The result can be seen as the emergence of a 'late modern' social imaginary deemed as the fourth age. This paper outlines the theoretical evolution of the concept of a social imaginary and demonstrates its relevance to aging studies and its applicability to the fourth age.

Frailty, disability and old age: a re-appraisal.

Frailty has become a topic of increasing interest in health care. No longer treated as a catch-all term for agedness, decline and disablement it has acquired a more precise definition, applied to those individuals whose 'aged' state is seen to put them at risk of adverse outcomes. This transformation is we argue the outcome of a more general differentiation of terms that were previously used to categorize the weak and marginal within society. Old age re-labelled as 'later life' has become re-articulated as a successful life stage relatively free from impairment. Disability has been re-positioned and its links with impairment attenuated while chronic illness has acquired a new narrative of its own. This has left frailty behind, redolent still with all the old negative attributes of marginality, but now more than ever evacuated of any remaining elements of 'status' or 'agency'. Frailty is defined less by the identities of those who are deemed frail than by what frailty seems to augur in its direction of travel - a journey towards unspecified adverse outcomes. This re-positioning, we suggest, helps lay the foundation of a social imaginary of 'the fourth age' as the new location of old age.

Aging without agency: theorizing the fourth age.

This article looks at the "fourth age" as a manifestation of the fragmentation of "old age". We argue that the fourth age emerges from the institutionalization of the infirmities of old age set against the appearance of a third-age culture that negates past representations of old age. We outline the historical marginalization of old age from early modern society to the contemporary concentration of infirmity within long-term care which makes of old age an undesirable "social imaginary". As "old age" fades from the social world, we liken this to the impact of a "black hole" distorting the gravitational field surrounding it, unobservable except for its traces. Within this perspective, the fourth age can be understood by examining not the experience itself but its impact on the discourses that surround and orientate themselves to it.

The power of silver: age and identity politics in the 21st century.

Pensioner political movements emerged in the interwar years in America and Europe. Documentary and empirical analyses confirm the influential role such movements played in helping shape the postwar social security systems of Western societies. Pensioner movements, qua pensioner movements, have failed to retain their influence, despite that "old age" and its demographic significance have become more salient. We propose three explanations for this: the first concerns the failure of old age to connect with the generational ethos of identity politics; the second reflects the nature of the actors now involved in the governance of old age; and the third concerns the individualization of retirement as a phase of life.

A murderous ageism? Age, death and Dr. Shipman.

This paper examines the case of Dr. Harold Shipman, the English family doctor who is judged to have murdered over two hundred of his patients during his professional career. As nearly all of his victims were old age pensioners, his case has raised questions about the role of ageism in his committing these murders and/or in his getting away with them for so long. This paper argues that there was nothing 'ageist' about his clinical practice, nor is there reason to believe that he killed old people to 'assist' their dying (whether out of kindness or impatience). However, it was under cover of the 'naturalness' of death, that Shipman committed so many of his preventable murders. Besides any significance for understanding individual psychopathology, Shipman's case highlights how the (medico-legal) distinction between 'unlawful' and 'natural' deaths merges with the (bio-medical) distinction between 'preventable' and 'unpreventable' deaths to create a normative account of "the good death".