Cultural Aging

by Katz, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9781551115771
• ISBN10: 1551115778
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-30
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr Higher education

Summary

Getting older is not what it used to be. Unprecedented changes to longevity, demographic, and life course patterns are transforming the social roles and experiences of older people. Cultural Agingexplores this phenomenon and focuses on what it means to grow older today. As Western populations age, positive images of aging that promote activity, autonomy, mobility, and choice have increased. On the one hand, these images defy traditionally negative stereotypes of decline, decrepitude, and dependency and create new opportunities for self-definition that stretch middle age into later life. On the other hand, the new aging animates an anti-aging culture, which potentially idealizes later life as an experience unburdened by the challenging material realities of growing older. This collection of essays looks at two general themes: the way that modern life course regimes have been defined historically by the professional sciences and the way that aging identities have been affected by the cultural and economic significance of consumer lifestyle markets. In the process, Katz offers a truly interdisciplinary approach to the subject that expands traditional gerontological theory by borrowing from the humanities, feminism, and cultural theory.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	9	(2)
Introduction	11	(10)
Part One: Aging, Life Course, and the Cultural Politics of Expertise	21	(98)
Imagining the Life Span: From Premodern Miracles to Postmodern Fantasies	23	(14)
Charcot's Older Women: Bodies of Knowledge at the Interface of Aging Studies and Women's Studies	37	(16)
The Government of Detail: The Case of Social Policy on Aging	53	(17)
Stephen Katz
Bryan Green
Reflections on the Gerontological Handbook	70	(15)
Critical Gerontological Theory: Intellectual Fieldwork and the Nomadic Life of Ideas	85	(16)
Creativity Across the Life Course? Titian, Michelangelo, and Older Artist Narratives	101	(18)
Stephen Katz
Erin Campbell
Part Two: Lifestyle and the Fashioning of Senior Worlds	119	(114)
Busy Bodies: Activity, Aging, and the Management of Everyday Life	121	(19)
Exemplars of Retirement: Identity and Agency Between Lifestyle and Social Movement	140	(21)
Stephen Katz
Debbie Laliberte-Rudman
Forever Functional: Sexual Fitness and the Aging Male Body	161	(27)
Barbara L. Marshall
Stephen Katz
Growing Older Without Aging? Postmodern Time and Senior Markets	188	(14)
Spaces of Age, Snowbirds, and the Gerontology of Mobility: The Elderscapes of Charlotte County, Florida	202	(31)
Afterword: Aging Together	233	(2)
References	235	(28)
Index	263