Ageing, Corporeality and Embodiment
By (author) Chris Gilleard, Paul Higgs
Publication date:
15 May 2013Publisher
Anthem PressDimensions:
229x153mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780857283290
‘Ageing, Corporeality and Embodiment’ outlines and develops an argument about the emergence of a ‘new ageing’ during the second half of the twentieth century and its realisation through the processes of ‘embodiment’. The authors argue that ageing as a unitary social process and agedness as a distinct social location have lost much of their purchase on the social imagination. Instead, this work asserts that later life has become as much a field for ‘not becoming old’ as of ‘old age’. The volume locates the origins of this transformation in the cultural ferment of the 1960s, when new forms of embodiment concerned with identity and the care of the self arose as mass phenomena. Over time, these new forms of embodiment have been extended, changing the traditional relationship between body, age and society by making struggles over the care of the self central to the cultures of later life.
‘Chris Gilleard and Paul Higgs are two of our foremost theorists of age. Their work has helped transform how we understand later life. In this fascinating and insightful book, they address the key issue in ageing: embodiment, its meaning and significance. The text is set to become a classic.’ —Julia Twigg, Professor of Social Policy and Sociology, University of Kent