Aging, Body and Society: Key Themes, Critical Perspectives

Abstract

Over the last two decades significant theoretical, methodological and empirical developments have explored the social, biological and cultural dimensions of our bodies as we grow older. An earlier concern within aging studies that a focus on the bodies of older people represented a return to biological determinism and an overly medical approach has been replaced by a realisation how a focus on aging bodies offers a novel lens to examine a range of existing sociological and theoretical concerns. These include the nature of the body, self and aging; social identities and social inequalities; lived experiences and everyday life; the role of materiality and consumption in the cultural constitution of age; health and illness; and aging across the full lifecourse from midlife to deep old age.