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This volume examines the manifold, often contradictory, aspects of ageing, considering the ways in which contemporary social transformations affect the experience, conception, interpretation, and representation of ageing. Thematically arranged, it brings together the latest scholarly work from around the world to consider theories and narratives of ageing and the effects of space and place on identity and the experience of old age. Combining micro and macro perspectives, as well as theoretical and applied research, this interdisciplinary volume offers cross-cultural and comparative studies that resist overgeneralization and reductivism in an effort to shed fresh light on our experience, understanding, and response to ageing in the modern world. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences, particularly sociology, gerontology, demography, social policy, and cultural studies, with interests in ageing and later life.
List of contents
Introduction: Ageing Matters: A Constructivist Perspective Part 1: Theories and Narratives of Ageing and Old Age 1. The Philosophic Homework of Later Life: On Narrative, Wisdom, and the Positive Potential of Growing Old 2. Gerontophobia: The Cultural Roots of the Old-Age Anxiety in Contemporary Society 3. Cougars and Crones: Maverick Archetypes for Older Women 4. Visual Representations of Older Persons: Current Discourses and their Historical Roots 5. 'Positive Ageing Happens in The West': Ageing Perceptions and Active Ageing Policy Implementation Among Romanian General Practitioners Part 2: Ageing and Old Age in Different Spaces 6. 'It's Okay to Color Outside the Lines': Living, Ageing and Dying in a Hospice 'Home' 7. Ageing Behind Locked Doors: Growing Older in Secure Mental Health Care and Prison Settings 8. Providing Elderly Care in Precarious Settings: A Case Study in Lima, Peru 9. Risks and Promises of Being Old in Social Media 10. Beauty in Later Life: Voices from Older Korean Women in New Zealand
About the author
Adriana Teodorescu is Associate Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Babeş-Bolyai University, Romania, and the co-editor of Death in Contemporary Popular Culture.
Dan Chiribucă is Professor of Sociology at Babeş-Bolyai University, Romania.
Summary
Thematically arranged, this interdisciplinary volume brings together the latest research from around the world to examine the manifold, often contradictory aspects of ageing, considering the ways in which contemporary social transformations affect the experience, conception, interpretation and representation of ageing.
