Cultures of Ageing

Self, Citizen and the Body

Chris Gilleard, Paul Higgs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317880158
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

For undergraduate courses in sociology and psychology which examine ageing adulthood. This book focuses on the dramatic changes to the nature of post-retirement life experienced by people at the end of the twentieth century. It examines age and ageing in terms of the key preoccupations of contemporary sociology - citizenship, the body and the self. The book provides a platform for a new social gerontology that sees ageing as central to our understanding of social change. It examines social, cultural and political changes in Europe and North America to address the need for a text that moves the study of ageing from social policy towards the mainstream of social science.

Chapter 1
Introduction

The argument of this book is straightforward. We believe that since ‘old age’ has become a predictable expectation of the adult lifespan, ageing has ceased to be understandable in terms of any common or totalizing experience. It is no longer the fixed and homogeneous process of personal and physiological decay by which it has been understood for much of recorded history. Ageing has become more complex, differentiated and ill defined, experienced from a variety of perspectives and expressed in a variety of ways at different moments in people’s lives. Now a near-universal experience, ageing is the subject of intense personal reflection and widespread public debate. Central to contemporary fears of finitude and failure, it is the antithesis of a youth culture that is itself growing old.¹ The centrality and universality that ageing has achieved serve only to increase the contradictions it embodies. It is this fragmentation of a highly socialized biological process which makes ageing such a key feature of the times in which we live and which is the subject of our book.

Our argument has many links with those approaches in gerontology which treat ageing as a complex and diverse entity made up of numerous psychological social and biological processes each related yet potentially independent from one another.² However, it is not our intention to pin down ageing along any set of foundationalist parameters. Instead, our concern lies with the various social meanings by which the contemporary experience of ageing is structured. These meanings and the structures that express them have become, we argue, less coherent and more contradictory than ever before. As a result, there is a gradual and irreversible fragmentation of ageing as a socialized attribute. Nevertheless, despite, or perhaps because of, this fragmentation, ageing is an attribute that an increasing number of adults must address, whether or not they accept, ignore or reject it. Distilling and analyzing the cultural precipitate from these various encounters with ageing, together with the structural contexts in which these encounters take place, form the main theme of our book. Choosing to adopt this explicitly ‘cultural’ approach, we also intend a critique of those functional and structural models of ageing that continue to dominate not just social gerontology but the whole gamut of ‘ageing studies’.

Cultural studies and ageing

All cultures have their material bases, which they in turn influence. The cultural and material expressions of ‘ageing’ are shaped by existing social relationships. The contradictions that make up the emerging cultures of ageing exist within an increasingly reflexive modernity. Their origins can be traced through the social history of the second half of the twentieth century. At the same time these processes must be set in the context of demographic changes of much longer duration. It is this combination of population, social and cultural change that provides the main framework by which we seek to approach and understand ‘ageing’. While it is conceivable that the demographic changes will be reversible, it is highly implausible that there will be any return to earlier demographic structures. Likewise the contemporary fragmentation of the cultural texts and practices that make up the lived experience of ‘ageing’ is unlikely to be a temporary and short-lived affair of merely passing curiosity. Rather it seems probable that ageing will be expressed in increasingly unstable and contested practices and contradictory texts for well into the twenty-first century.

We have called our book Cultures of Ageing: self, citizen and the body to give priority to the role of culture in shaping the experience and expression of ageing. By culture we are referring to the various and complex systems of meaning that constitute everyday life. By and large we are following the structural conception of culture outlined by Thompson in his book Ideology and Modern Culture, involving:

the study of symbolic forms – that is meaningful actions, objects, and expressions of various kinds – in relation to the historically specific and socially structured contexts and processes within which and by means of which these symbolic forms are produced transmitted and received.³

Our aim is to examine the systems of meaning that ‘ageing’ takes on, both in individual lives and in social institutions and how those systems of meaning are located in the changing social structures of the twentieth century.

The appearance and consolidation of ‘cultural studies’ as an academic field of study did much to stimulate a renewed interest in the concept of culture within the social sciences.⁴ This ‘cultural turn’ has taken a long time to penetrate social gerontology. Stimulated to a large extent by the pioneering work of Mike Featherstone and Mike Hepworth there are signs of a growing interest in how ‘ageing’ is treated in everyday texts, in the media, in advertisements as well as in art.⁵ There is also an emerging interest in the everyday experiences of older people that is not preoccupied with their health and potential frailty.⁶

Making sense of the chronology of the lifecourse and the processes of growing up and growing older has been part of human culture for a very long time. The various divisions made within the human lifespan and their characterization may have changed somewhat over the centuries but they all have taken as unchallenged the idea that there clearly exists a singular lifecourse through which all men (and women, though most historical writings have focused upon the male lifecourse) must pass.⁷ Only in the late twentieth century has the idea emerged that human agency can be exercised over how ageing will be expressed and experienced. The assumption that individuals can choose the manner in which they wish to mark out their lives is a radical break with the past. It is the erosion of this unitary ‘ages of life’ culture which is the principal concern of this book.

We have chosen to write about ‘ageing’ rather than ‘old age’. Old age does not figure in the ‘plastic’ or ‘flexible’ lifecourse of men and women in current society. Rather, it acts as a kind of reference point around which various cultures of ageing revolve. Old age itself is not a site that is seriously contested or challenged. It remains a period of life that is excluded, marginalized or institutionalized. Whilst the changes that accompany ageing are being reframed and revalued – the ‘empty nest’, retirement, the menopause, greying, and so on – the changes that tip a person into ‘old age’ cannot be so easily reframed or transgressed. One may speak of nursing-home cultures, cultures of health care or even cultures of dying, but old age remains an obdurately singular category – a future end that most people choose to avoid however long their lives may be.⁸

It would be disingenuous to completely separate ageing from old age. The various cultures of ageing each have their own representation of old age. We would argue, however, that it is principally by their resistance to old age that these cultures are shaped and defined. Whether or not they offer ways to ward off old age, shrink it to a bitter but palatable pill or prepare for it as an eventual resting place, no organizations or institutions seek to portray old age to the individual as either an aspirational commodity to choose or a socially valued process to join. Old age lies sullen and unchanging – represented as the end of the social; a point in life after which further choices are irrelevant.

‘Postmodernity’ and cultural fragmentation

Within those disciplines that make up cultural studies, it is impossible to ignore the concept of postmodernism. As Kellner has observed, ‘discussions of postmodernism began in the field of cultural theory’.⁹ However, if culture is ‘one of the most complicated words in the English language’,¹⁰ postmodernism must be a strong competitor for definitional complexity. Almost everything written about postmodernism and post-modernity makes mention of its terminological ambiguity and equally often its insubstantiality. Still, the term has become so widespread that it is difficult to deny its power to represent the ‘Zeitgeist’ of our times. Despite, or perhaps because of, this, it is a term that leads to continual disagreement about its parameters, a tension that has made writing this book a longer, more protracted and possibly more challenging task than was originally conceived. At the risk of oversimplification, there are two general formulations regarding the postmodernity/postmodernism debate. One is supportive of the idea that everything has changed while the other takes a more nuanced, maybe cautious, approach to a world which may have changed but which nevertheless remains amenable to modernist methods of inquiry.

The first perspective argues that postmodernity is a shorthand way of capturing the sense of difference and ambiguity that touches all aspects of life in contemporary society. It is expressed most vividly in the way in which the new century is being greeted. Ideas of a future destined to deliver further steady progress in the improvement of the human condition no longer carry the conviction they did at the beginning of the twentieth century.¹¹ There is no obvious consensus about what constitutes the good life or how it can be achieved – although there is little disagreement that it should be available to all. There is an excess of information, a ‘proliferation’ of signs that make all interpretations of social phenomena temporary and equivocal. The more real insights we seem to have of reality, the less convinced we are of its substance. Terms and boundaries are blurred. Experience seems no longer a guide but a goal in itself. While there is more ‘information’ than before this only makes every statement seem even less significant. Too many ‘authoritative voices’ are heard for any voice to be authoritative. What can be imagined is much more than previous imaginations; at the same time everything seems less realizable. There is no longer a common trust in any collective means of ensuring an individually satisfying life or even a socially validated one. More weight is placed upon human agency and choice, but the emphasis is on selection rather than action. We are preoccupied with choosing and what the outcomes of our choices might be.

Political concerns are dominated by issues of recognition and representation – of being seen and of being heard. Yet, the numerous attempts to not be ignored make difficult the establishment of any common voice and any common understanding of what social institutions can or should articulate. In postmodernity there is a wish to represent the worth of the individual but less desire to redistribute social wealth. The circuits of capital accumulation seem to act as a directing force, but a force that few believe has a real direction. Global systems of speculation have created a rapidly changing virtual economy more powerful but less predictable than the systems of national capital that forged the modern world. Against a background of an unknowable reality, the known world is changing and, for now at least, postmodernity represents that change.

The alternative view derives from more traditional social theories where the appearance of things is treated separately from their underlying causal reality. From this perspective the distinction between postmodernity and postmodernism is central. In rejecting the idea that we live in postmodernity what is being rejected is the idea that social structures are beyond understanding or indeed that they have any structured nature that can be understood. The epistemological relativism of post-modernism provides no way of studying any issue other than as commentary; postmodern scholarship too easily slides into pose, pretence and pastiche.

Locating the position of humanity within the flux of images created by modern communications in a global commodity market does not invalidate an analysis of the structural regularities that give rise to a postmodern culture. Writers such as Jameson have sought to establish the continuities that link the more ordered realities of modernism with the cultural overload of postmodernism.¹² The subtitle of his book on postmodernism, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, provides the beginnings of an argument that locates postmodern culture within the unfolding dynamic of the capitalist mode of production. To this Harvey has added the globalizing dimension of contracting time and space.¹³ From less overtly Marxist positions, writers such as Giddens have tried to use the insights provided by postmodernists to describe a state of ‘high modernity’ or ‘reflexive modernization’. This is a preferred periodization as it is seen to capture better the processes of a rationalizing modernity, which disembed individuals from traditions and force them to be agentic and self-directing. The compression of time and space combines with the plethora of sources of information forcing each person to constantly make choices about their lives in an era of ‘manufactured uncertainty’.

Rejecting the need for epistemological relativism by stressing the central role of global capitalism in making the world appear chaotic creates the possibility of seeing many of the facets of the modern world as possessing a coherence rather than an unintelligibility. The growth of a global market has commodified many aspects of culture. The distinction between tradition and modernity has collapsed as even tradition is treated as a choice rather than the necessary underpinning of everyday life. If modernizing practices became concrete through government regulation of social life and the technologies of expert control, postmodern culture has turned everything into a matter of personal choice – policed by the technologies of consumer research. No longer directed by a single ‘authoritative’ voice, each individual must deal with multiple sources of expert advice vying for attention and closure. Predicated on the notion of consumer sovereignty, individuals must increasingly construct themselves and their relationships with the world from a variety of discourses, none of which is capable of providing a totally coherent understanding.

What these differing perspectives share is the recognition that much of the restlessness of late modern/postmodern society stems from the expansion of retail capital and the relentless commodification of everyday life. It is not just the commodification of everyday life that is distinct; it is also its expansion. The cultural space in which people live is broader, more complex, more contradictory and in many ways ric...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 From political economy to the culture of personal identity
• 3 Retirement, identity and consumer society
• 4 Identity, self-care and staying young
• 5 The old person as citizen
• 6 Senior citizenship and contemporary social policy
• 7 Ageing and its embodiment
• 8 Bio-ageing and the reproduction of the social
• 9 Ageing, Alzheimer’s and the uncivilized body
• 10 The inevitability of the cultural turn in ageing studies
• 11 Concluding comments
• Index