Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life

by Featherstone,Mike

• ISBN13: 9780415112581
• ISBN10: 0415112583
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-09-11
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

We all have a finite life span. We are born, we get old and we die. Given the universality of the aging process, it is remarkable that there is almost a complete absence of study of culture and self-image of the middle aged and old.Images of Aging: CulturalRepresentations of Later Lifechanges this. The contributors discuss images of aging which have come to circulate in the advanced industrial societies of today. They address themes such as: body and self image in everyday interaction; experience and identity in old age; advertising and consumer culture images of the elderly; images of aging used by Government agencies in health education campaigns; the diversity of historical representations of the elderly; gender images of aging; images of senility and second childhood; images of health, illness and death.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Contributors	viii
Preface	xi
Introduction	1	(18)
Mike Featherstone
Andrew Wernick
Part I Historical and comparative perspectives
Images of Old Age in America, 1790--1970: A Vision and a Re-Vision	19	(10)
Andrew Achenbaum
Images of Positive Aging: A Case Study of Retirement Choice Magazine	29	(19)
Mike Featherstone
Mike Hepworth
The Status and Image of the Elderly in Japan: Understanding the Paternalistic Ideology	48	(13)
Shuichi Wada
Imagining the Life-Span: From Premodern Miracles to Postmodern Fantasies	61	(18)
Steven Katz
Part II Gender and identity
Tribute to the Older Woman: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Ageism	79	(18)
Kathleen Woodward
Imaging the Aging of Men	97	(22)
Jeff Hearn
Part III Relations between the generations
Changing Images of Aging and the Social Construction of the Life Course	119	(16)
Tamara K. Hareven
Back to our Futures: Imaging Second Childhood	135	(14)
Jenny Hockey
Allison James
Children's Drawings of Grandparents: A Quantitative Analysis of Images	149	(24)
Cornelia Hummel
Jean-Charles Rey
Christian J. Lalive d'Epinay
Part IV Consumer culture
From Gloom to Boom: Age, Identity and Target Marketing	173	(15)
Kimberly Anne Sawchuk
Chan is Missing: The Death of the Aging Asian Eye	188	(21)
Norman K. Denzin
Creating Memories: Some Images of Aging in Mass Tourism	209	(18)
David Chaney
Part V The body, aging and technology
Post-Bodies, Aging and Virtual Reality	227	(18)
Mike Featherstone
Aging and Identity: Some Reflections on the Somatization of the Self	245	(18)
Bryan S. Turner
Part VI Death
From Grim Reaper to Cheery Condom: Images of Aging and Death in Australian Aids Education Campaigns	263	(17)
John Tulloch
Selling Funerals, Imaging Death	280
Andrew Wernick