'Healthy Ageing' policies and anti-ageing ideologies and practices: on the exercise of responsibility

Double-Bind of Recruitment of Older Adults Into Studies of Successful Aging via Assistive Information and Communication Technologies: Mapping Review

BACKGROUND

Two fields of research and development targeting the needs of the aging population of the world are flourishing, successful aging and assistive information and communication technologies (A-ICTs). The risks of ageist stereotypes emerging from how we communicate in both discourses are long known. This raises questions about whether using specific age criteria in the context of "aging deficits" can bias participation in, or compliance with, the research process by older adults who try to avoid age-related stigma.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to examine subject recruitment, study designs (based on age >65 years criteria), as well as discourses in research objectives and conclusions in health research on affordances of A-ICTs for older adults.

METHODS

A systematic mapping approach was used to characterize rationales, methods, stated objectives, and expected outcomes of studies indexed in PubMed and retrieved through the search logic (["Older Adults" OR Seniors OR Elderly] AND [ICT OR gerontechnology OR "Assistive Technology")] AND ("Healthy Aging" OR "Successful Aging" OR "healthy ageing" OR "successful ageing"). Inclusion criteria were as follows: the study should have recruited older participants (aged >65 years), been qualitative or quantitative research, and involved the introduction of at least one A-ICT for health-related improvements. Exclusion criteria were as follows: reviews, viewpoints, surveys, or studies that used information and communication technology for data collection instead of lifestyle interventions. Content, thematic, and discourse analyses were used to map the study characteristics and synthesize results with respect to the research question.

RESULTS

Of 180 studies that passed the search logic, 31 (17.2%) satisfied the inclusion criteria (6 randomized controlled trials, 4 purely quantitative studies, 9 focus groups, 2 observational studies, and 10 mixed methods studies). In all but one case, recruitment was pragmatic and nonrandom. Thematic analysis of rationales revealed a high likelihood of emphasis on the burdens of aging, such as rising costs of care (12/31, 39%) and age-related deficits (14/31, 45%). The objectives of the research fell under 4 categories: promotion of physical activity, acceptance and feasibility of robots and remote health monitoring systems, risk detection, and the future of A-ICTs in health care for older adults. Qualitative studies were more attentive to the nonageist research guidelines. Heterogeneity in the study results (both qualitative and quantitative) was not related to age but to individual agency, acceptance, and adherence. A combination of research strategies (participatory, longitudinal, playful, flexible, and need-based designs) proved successful in characterizing variations in study outcomes. Studies that documented recruitment dynamics revealed that fear of stigma was a factor that biased participants' engagement.

CONCLUSIONS

This review indicates that age is not an informative criterion for recruitment and retention of participants. Charting the dynamics of adoption of, and interaction with, A-ICTs is critical for advancing research and technology development.

The 'good' of extending fertility: ontology and moral reasoning in a biotemporal regime of reproduction

Since the emergence of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a specific set of technologies has been developed to address the problem of the 'biological clock'. The medical extension of fertility time is accompanied by promissory narratives to help women synchronize conflicting biological and social temporalities. This possibility also has a transgressive potential by blurring one of the biological landmarks - the menopause - by which reproductive lives are organized and governed. These new ways of managing, measuring and controlling reproductive time have renewed debates on the age limits of motherhood and the moral legitimacy of medical intervention into age-related fertility decline. Building on Amir's feminist concept of biotemporality, this paper questions what happens when the ontological foundations of age-limited motherhood are disrupted by technologies which allow fertility to be extended. It discusses the reconfigurations of the ontological boundaries of the facts of life in the light of literature on reproductive technologies and temporality. Through the Swiss experience, the paper shows how medical experts are drawn into negotiating the ontological boundaries of age-limited motherhood along the binaries of the normal/pathological and the biological/social. Questioning the purpose of medical interventions in what are seen as facts of life, they produce different configurations of moral reasoning where what is natural undergoes shifts which both reinforce the normative order and subvert it.

Influence of Contact Experience and Germ Aversion on Negative Attitudes Toward Older Adults: Role of Youth Identity

The world’s population is currently aging, and the issue of ageism has become serious worldwide, including in Japan. Negative attitudes toward older adults can have undesirable effects on the mental and physical health of this group. We focused on the effects of contact experience with older adults and germ aversion, or the degree of aversion to infection, on negative attitudes toward older adults. Additionally, we included a moderating variable; youth identity, or the sense of belonging with younger rather than older age groups. An online survey was conducted with Japanese participants (N = 603). We conducted multiple regression analyses and the results showed that the interaction effect between youth identity and contact experience on negative attitudes toward older adults was significant. The findings suggest that contact experience may help in reducing negative attitudes toward older adults among people with low youth identity. The interaction effect between youth identity and germ aversion, however, was not significant. Academic research on the effects of some psychological interventions (e.g., intergenerational social exchange) should pay particular attention to the role of youth identity. Future directions for empirical studies are also discussed.

The making of 'old eggs': the science of reproductive ageing between fertility and anti-ageing technologies

This article proposes going back in the history of reproductive medicine to shed light on the role of assisted reproductive technology (ART) in the making of 'old eggs'. Focusing on two key technologies - egg donation and cytoplasmic transfer - both of which contributed significantly to the production of scientific knowledge about reproductive ageing, the article suggests that ART can be analysed as 'in-vivo models' playing a pivotal role in the shift from age as a demographic variable to ageing understood in biological terms. It will shed light on the role of ART in locating age in the eggs and producing a cellular understanding of fertility decline. It argues that ART not only offers new means of reconfiguring the biological clock by extending fertility, but also reconfigures the biology of reproductive ageing itself. This becomes both the target and the means for new technological interventions, imaginaries and norms, anchored in women's bodies and a more plastic biology, and thereby illuminates hitherto underexplored aspects of the encounter between the science and technology of reproduction and anti-ageing.

Aging as a Productive Process: A Critical Analysis of Aging Policy in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

There has been a growing focus on healthy aging in the political agenda. Discourses contained within policy documents have the potential to shape our notions of healthy aging and well-being. This comprehensive critical document analysis of provincial aging policies in Newfoundland and Labrador (2006-2015) contributes to a larger research study exploring aging women's notions of health and the body in relation to the aging process. The findings highlight how healthy aging discourses focus on the concept of productivity and how a certain type of health is required for ongoing contribution. The paper concludes by arguing that if healthy aging is framed around one's ability to remain productive, notions of health will remain limited to an externalized measure of output versus subjective experience of well-being.

Therapeutic or detrimental mobilities? Walking groups for older adults

The health benefits of walking through greenspace have earned widespread academic attention in recent years and have been termed 'therapeutic mobilities'. As a result, walking groups are actively encouraged by health professionals as a way to promote 'healthy ageing'. This paper examines whether the promotion of community-led walking groups relies upon overly optimistic understandings that portray walking in greenspace as an inherently therapeutic practice. Accordingly, this paper introduces the concept of 'detrimental mobilities' to explore how the shared movement promoted via walking groups may not always be inherently therapeutic and may have some detrimental impacts on the individuals who take part in these activities. Drawing on findings from in-depth walking interviews with older members of the 'Walking for Health' scheme in Southampton, England, this paper examines how mobilities have the potential to disable, as much as they enable, health and wellbeing.

A matter of life and longer life

While the major scientific discoveries that would extend the length and health of human lives are not yet here, the research that could create them is already underway. As prospects for a world in which extended and improved lives inches closer into reality, the discourse about what to consider as we move forward grows richer, with corporate executives, ideologues, scientists, theologians, ethicists, investigative journalists, and philosophers taking part in imagining and anticipating the rich array of humanity's possible futures. Drawing from in-depth interviews with key stakeholders (n = 22), we offer empirical insights into key values and beliefs animating the "longevity movement," including what constitutes an ideal human state, the imperative to intervene, and the role of individual liberty and concerns for equality. Emerging from these interviews are common concerns about reducing suffering, preserving diversity in visions of successful aging and how best to promote access to a future that may not remain hypothetical for long.

Community Sport and the Politics of Aging: Co-design and Partnership Approaches to Understanding the Embodied Experiences of Low-Income Older People

The promotion of physical activity for older people is dominated by biomedically informed polices emphasizing the prescription of exercise as medicine and a universal approach to the promotion of active aging in later life. Yet, more recent research recognizes that being physically active in later life is complex and contested, shaped by the intersections of biological, psychological, and sociological experiences, and requires differentiated responses that address this complexity. There is a disconnect between research, policy, and the physical activity experiences of older people which leads to over-generalized policy and practice in the promotion and delivery of community sport to older people. This paper presents findings from a complex community sport project employing a coproduction framework with low income older age people. Participatory community approaches including focus group discussions, and extended observations and informal conversations throughout the project develop understanding of the complexities of aging and community sport engagement among older people with limited income. Three themes are identified and discussed: (1) lived experience, aging bodies, and the changing dynamics of involvement in sport and exercise in the life course, (2) embodying aging-moving beyond practical barriers for understanding aging, lived experience and being physically active, and (3) corporeal pleasures of older sporting bodies. The paper concludes that there is a need to explore the significance of locally specific public knowledge from older people which directly addresses the complexity and inequalities of individuals' everyday lives in their communities; lived experiences likely to impact on preferences for, engagement in, and enjoyment of physical activity.

‘I've got lots of gaps, but I want to hang on to the ones that I have’: the ageing body, oral health and stories of the mouth

The mouth may be presented and understood in different ways, be subject to judgement by others and, as we age, may intrude on everyday life due to problems that affect oral health. However, research that considers older people's experiences concerning their mouths and teeth is limited. This paper reports on qualitative research with 43 people in England and Scotland, aged 65–91, exploring the significance of the mouth over the lifecourse. It uses the concept of ‘mouth talk’ to explore narratives of maintaining, losing and replacing teeth. Participants engaged in ‘mouth talk’ to downplay the impact of the mouth, demonstrate socially appropriate ageing, and distance themselves from ‘real’ old age by retaining a moral identity and sense of self. They also found means to challenge dominant discourses of ageing in how they spoke about missing teeth. Referring to Leder's notion of ‘dys-appearance’ and Gilleard and Higgs’ work on the social imaginary of the fourth age, the study illustrates the ways in which ‘mouth talk’ can contribute to sustaining a sense of self in later life, presenting the ageing mouth, with and without teeth, as an absent presence. It also argues for the importance of listening to stories of the mouth in order to expand understanding of people's approaches to oral health in older age.

The silver lining of greying: Ageing discourses and positioning of ageing persons in the field of social health insurance

Contemporary ageing discourses and policies perceive being active as the key to a good later life and thereby focus on individual responsibility and self-care. Drawing on website articles and press releases of Belgian sickness fund agencies, this study analyses the ageing discourses and positioning of ageing persons of these organisations. A discourse analysis was performed using positioning theory to analyse how sickness fund agencies discursively construct the ageing process and position ageing persons, and to investigate how these positioning acts are related to sickness fund agencies' roles as social insurer, social movement, social entrepreneur and private insurer. Our results reveal three storylines on ageing; ageing as a medical problem, ageing as a new stage in life and ageing as a natural life process. These storylines are applied to construct ageing and position ageing persons in different ways. Depending on their role, sickness fund agencies take on a different position drawing on these different storylines. We also show how these storylines reproduce the moral framework on how to age well and thereby disempower ageing persons. Our results underline the importance of multidimensional perspectives on ageing.

Governing the ageing body: explicating the negotiation of ‘positive’ ageing in daily life

Positive ageing discourses have proliferated in Western nations, forming key aspects of structured mandates for how to think about, and act towards, ageing bodies. As interpretive resources, positive ageing discourses shape how adults growing older think about themselves, their bodies and the bodies of others in relation to the process of ageing and the imperative to ‘age well’. Informed by governmentality, this paper considers how positive ageing discourses function as technologies of government to inform and direct conduct. Drawing on in-depth narrative data, this analysis traces how ageing citizens take up and negotiate positive ageing discourses in their everyday lives, drawing attention to the intensive work, inexorable focus on the body and numerous resources that the enactment of positive ageing requires. Specifically, this analysis illuminates the interplay between the lived experiences of ageing and the socio-culturally structured mandates that shape how ageing and ageing bodies are conceptualised and approached, and draws attention to the moments of tension that arise out of such interplay. We suggest that these moments of tension highlight how the bodywork practices that older adults rigorously and continuously engage in are not so much directed towards the pursuit of ageless ageing, but rather are a response to the inescapable threat of dependency, decline and loss of agency, and thus operate to affirm ageist underpinnings of positive ageing discourses.

Culturally embedded health beliefs, self-care and the use of anti-ageing medicine among Australian and Japanese older adults

Adopting Kleinman's and Lock's ideas that there are cultural variations in understandings of health care and the medicalisation of ageing bodies, this study compares and contrasts older adults' use of anti-ageing medicine in two cultural settings. Based on 42 interviews conducted in Australia and Japan with adults aged 60 and over, findings revealed distinct pathways to initiating anti-ageing medicine use between the two cohorts which reflect different attitudes to the medicalisation of ageing in the two settings. In Australia where consultation of medical doctors for major and minor ailments is routine for many older adults, supplement use was initiated on doctor's advice, or reactionary, in that dissatisfaction with doctors' advice was the impetus. By contrast, many Japanese elders did not seek the advice of medical practitioners for minor health issues, considering them instead to be part of a natural process of ageing, and viewed their supplement use as co-extensive with their use of Shokuji-ryohou or a traditional corrective diet. Despite these cultural differences, both the Australian and Japanese elders resisted more extreme manifestations of the biomedicalisation of ageing and took anti-ageing medicine to ward off the perceived danger of surgery in later life.

Redefining agency in late life: the concept of ‘disponibility’

In light of an increased ageing population, policy makers are faced with the urgent problem of planning programmes that reflect active ageing or, in other words, the promotion of activities that help individuals to remain active in a societal context. The construct of agency, defined as the capacity to make decisions and to address situations depending on the individual's future plans, reflects a specific normative criterion: individuals are expected to live in an active and productive way, while those who are unable to live up to this expectation are considered dependent, passive, unproductive, weak. From a social constructionist perspective, the current study proposes a critical reflection on the qualities usually attributed to the construct of agency that are liable to appear reductive and oppressive when applied to an elderly population. Once the basic premises underlying agency, as it is commonly defined in the Western tradition, have been deconstructed, a different conceptualisation, based on interviews with older individuals, will be presented. The current work aims to produce a different conceptual framework that will permit examination of experiences and organisational modalities of agency typifying later life. The comments made by the interviewees in many cases resonate with ideas contained in Taoist philosophy and, more specifically, with the concept ofdisponibilité(or disponibility) outlined by the French sinologist François Jullien, which we discuss here.

How Did Erectile Dysfunction Become "Natural"? A Review of the Critical Social Scientific Literature on Medical Treatment for Male Sexual Dysfunction

This article reviews the multidisciplinary social science literature assessing the social consequences of medical treatment for male sexual dysfunction. This literature applies medicalization theory and social constructionist approaches to gender to assert that Euro-American cultural ideals of masculinity and sexuality, as well as ageism and ableism, determine which sexual changes and experiences get defined as "dysfunction" and shape the marketing and use of medical treatments for those changes. These medical responses assuage the suffering of men who become unable to meet cultural ideals for sexuality but in the process make reductive norms for male sexuality seem biologically natural. In addition, the critical social science research suggests that an economic logic underlies the process of redefining diversity and change in men's sexual function as medical pathology. However, comparative qualitative data on men's and their sexual partners' experiences of sexuality and aging across world regions suggest that people do not universally accept the narrow ideals of male sexuality embedded in medical discourse regarding men's sexual dysfunction. The diversity in people's sexual desires across the life course and their responses to sexual function change highlight the cultural nature of medical definitions of sexual dysfunction.

Institutional analysis of health promotion for older people in Europe - concept and research tool

BACKGROUND

European societies are ageing rapidly and thus health promotion for older people (HP4OP) is becoming an increasingly relevant issue. Crucial here is not only the clinical aspect of health promotion but also its organisational and institutional dimension. The latter has been relatively neglected in research on HP4OP. This issue is addressed in this study, constituting a part of the EU project ProHealth65+, engaging ten member countries. This paper is based on two intertwining research goals: (1) exploring which institutions/organisations are performing HP4OP activities in selected European countries (including sectors involved, performed roles of these institutions, organisation of those activities); (2) developing an institutional approach to HP4OP. Thus, the paper provides a description of the analytical tools for further research in this area.

METHODS

The mentioned aims were addressed through the mutual use of two complementary methods: (a) a literature review of scientific and grey literature; and (b) questionnaire survey with selected expert respondents from 10 European countries. The expert respondents, selected by the project's collaborating partners, were asked to fill in a custom designed questionnaire concerning HP4OP institutional aspects.

RESULTS

The literature review provided an overview of the organisational arrangements in different HP4OP initiatives. It also enabled the development of functional institutional definitions of health promotion, health promotion activities and interventions, as well as an institutional definition adequate to the health promotion context. The distinctions between sectors were also clarified. The elaborated questionnaires provided in-depth information on countries specifically indicating the key sectors involved in HP4OP in those selected countries. These are: health care, regional/local authorities, NGO's/voluntary institutions. The questionnaire and literature review both resulted in the indication of a significant level of cross-sectorial cooperation in HP4OP.

CONCLUSIONS

The inclusion of the institutional analysis within the study of HP4OP provides a valuable opportunity to analyse, in a systematic way, good practices in this respect, also in terms of institutional arrangements. A failure to address this aspect in policymaking might potentially cause organisational failure even in evidence-based programmes. This paper frames the perception of this problem.

Exergaming in retirement centres and the integration of media and physical literacies

This paper reports on a multi-method analysis of a recently emergent, though still understudied, trend: the use of exercise-themed video games (i.e., 'exergames') in retirement centres. The study in question specifically featured participant observation and interviews with residents and members of staff at retirement centres in Ontario, Canada. Data collection was aimed at understanding how games such as Wii Bowling are being put to use in retirement centre contexts and the implications of such activity. Findings on the one hand suggest that exergames are deemed valuable in the process of promoting both social engagement and physical activity. 'Virtual' bowling can bring people together in communal spaces while also 'getting them up' and active. On the other hand, however, exergaming presents challenges. For retirement centre residents, it engenders health risks while also demanding the deft synchronization of media and physical literacies. For activities coordinators and other members of staff responsible for residents' care, it means they too must stay abreast of the technology sector's latest innovations; they must develop media and physical literacies of their own. These findings are used as a platform for a broader discussion of aging, embodiment, and media in the paper's final section. Against the backdrop of existing conceptualizations of the third age, the use of exergames in retirement centres is deemed conducive not to independence and consumerism fully-fledged, but rather to the manifestation of 'quasi-consumerism' and 'quasi-independence' instead. Third age logic is thus both reinforced and subtly undermined.

Embodying positive aging and neoliberal rationality: Talking about the aging body within narratives of retirement

Within contemporary Western contexts, positive aging discourses are a key aspect of structured mandates for how to think about and act toward aging bodies. This study adds to previous work on embodiment that has situated how aging bodies are managed by focusing on the body as an aspect of retirement preparation, and critically considering how the imperative to govern the aging body in ways consistent with being a 'good' neoliberal citizen circulated through positive aging discourses is negotiated by aging individuals. Utilizing narrative data from a study addressing the discursive re-shaping and narrative negotiation of retirement within the Canadian context conducted with 30 informants aged 45 to 83, this paper draws upon a governmentality perspective to critically analyze ways informants talked about their aging bodies as part of preparing for and moving into retirement. Overall, the findings illustrate how informants embodied positive aging discourses and, in turn, embodied neoliberal rationality particularly in taking up the call to attend to the body as part of the broadening of retirement planning within a neoliberal context in which health, social, financial and other responsibilities are increasingly shifted toward individuals. Although informants described realizing some of the promises offered up with positive aging discourses, such as a sense of youthfulness and bodily control, their narratives also point to detrimental individual and social implications that can arise out of the limits of bodily practices, the need for perpetual risk management, an aversion to oldness, and attributions of failure. As such, this study raises concerns about the implications of the intersections of positive aging discourses and the neoliberal agenda of activation, responsibilization and individualization.

Unmaking old age: political and cognitive formats of active ageing

Active ageing is a policy tool that dominates the way the ageing society has been constituted during the last decades. The authors argue that active ageing is an attempt at unmaking the concept of old age, by engaging in the plasticity of ageing in various ways. Through a document study of the different epistemes, models and forms used in the constitution of active ageing policies, the authors show how active ageing is not one coordinated set of policy instruments, but comes in different formats. In the WHO, active ageing configures individual lifestyle in order to expand the plasticity of ageing, based on epidemiological and public health conventions. In the EU, active ageing reforms the retirement behaviour of populations in order to integrate the plasticity of ageing into the institutions, based on social gerontological and demographic conventions. These conventional arrangements are cognitive and political in the way they aim at unmaking both the structures and the expectations that has made old age and format a new ideal of the 'good late life'. The paper examines the role of knowledge in policy and questions whether the formats of active ageing should be made to co-exist, or whether the diversity and comprehensiveness enable a local adaptation and translation of active ageing policies.

‘Women are just more active’ – gender as a determining factor in involvement in senior centres

Centres for seniors offering leisure-time activities currently represent significant actors that translate the idea of active ageing into a particular approach to seniors. Despite the fact that active ageing is now represented by the state and providers of social services as the universally desirable way of ageing, the significantly smaller numbers of male clients was identified as a marked feature of such organisations. A three-year ethnographic study was conducted at two centres in the Czech Republic which offer seniors-only leisure-time activities strongly grounded in the idea of active ageing. The method of participant observation was used, and 47 in-depth interviews were conducted with the centres' clients and employees. The higher participation by women in the centres and the role they attribute to such organisations in their lives is analysed in the context of their previous gendered biographies. Gender patterns embedded in the way daily activities at the senior centres are organised, as well as in the idea of active ageing itself, are highlighted. Despite the seeming invisibility of gender as a principle that structures the way these centres are run, they are in fact gendered organisations, where gender emerges as a basic principle affecting the chances of participating in active ageing as presented by the centres.

A cutting critique: transforming ‘older’ through cosmetic surgery

This paper engages with a cultural politics of ‘older’. At the centre of this politics are essentialist discourses of corporeal ‘ageing’ that limit and stigmatise the subjective experience of ‘older’. Drawing together theoretical insights from Foucault's work on care of the self with data from in-depth interviews with ‘older’ people who have undergone cosmetic surgery and cosmetic surgery practitioners, this paper advances the proposition that cosmetic surgery can be re-imagined as an ethical practice of self-care. To critique the limitations imposed by ‘natural ageing’ through an ethic of ‘ageing gracefully’, the paper explores how older people who have undergone cosmetic surgery stylise the ethical experience of ‘older’ through active resistance of an ‘elderly’ identity. It argues that the practice of cosmetic surgery by ‘older’ people constitutes a cutting critique of the limits of ‘older’ and an experiment with the possibility of exceeding and ultimately transforming those limits.

Moving Beyond 'Aging In Place' to Understand Migration and Aging: Place Making and the Centrality Of Occupation

'Aging in place' has become a key conceptual framework for understanding and addressing place within the aging process. However, aging in place has been critiqued for not sufficiently providing tools to understand relations or transactions between aging and place, and for not matching the diversity of contemporary society in which people are moving between and across nations more than ever before. In this article, the authors draw from concepts of place and migration that are becoming increasingly visible in occupational science. The concept of 'aging in place' is critically examined as an example of an ideal where the understanding of place is insufficiently dynamic in a context of migration. The authors suggest that the concept of place making can instead be a useful tool to understand how occupation can be drawn upon to negotiate relationships that connect people to different places around the world, how the negotiated relations are embedded within the occupations that fill daily lives, and how this process is contextualized and enacted in relation to resources and capabilities.

Designing 'older' rather than denying ageing: problematizing anti-ageing discourse in relation to cosmetic surgery undertaken by older people

This paper problematizes anti-ageing discourse and interpretations that cosmetic surgery is an ageist practice and older people who undergo cosmetic surgery are denying ageing. It argues that conceptions of cosmetic surgery as anti-ageing are premised on an essentialist conception of the 'naturally ageing body'. Interview data and media texts are used to demonstrate how, through the notion of "re" suggested by terms such as rejuvenation, reversal and renewal, anti-ageing discourses inscribe 'ageing' in the practice of cosmetic surgery by older people. The oppressive interpretation that older people who undergo cosmetic surgery are 'denying ageing,' and associated subjection to moral critique, are effects of this discourse. To counter interpretations of cosmetic surgery as 'anti-ageing', the paper takes up the idea that cosmetic surgery is undertaken to look better not younger. To advance this argument, the paper suggests that the forms of rationality associated with cosmetic surgery constitute a contemporary regimen of 'care of the self' which enable ethical agency and creative self-stylisation. Through this framework cosmetic surgery can be re-imagined as a practice for designing 'older' rather than denying ageing.

Narratives at work: what can stories of older athletesdo?

Previous research has shown that young adults tend to identify and reinforce negative stereotypes of growing older. They can express both fear and trepidation regarding the bodily changes that occur with advancing age. With this in mind, in this paper we draw upon Frank's (2010) theoretical framework of socio-narratology to examine the work that stories cando. We take as a working example the impact that stories of ageing told by masters athletes might have upon young adults, and specifically their perceptions of (self-)ageing. Three focus groups were carried out with the young adults to examine their perceptions of (self-)ageing prior to and following their viewing of a digital story portraying images and narratives of mature, natural (‘drug-free’) bodybuilders. Our analysis pointed to a number specific capacities that stories of masters athletes might have, namely the potential to re-open young adults sense of narrative foreclosure, the stretching and expanding of existing imagined storylines, and increasing the availability of narrative options. We propose that understanding what stories can do, what they can do best, and the narrative environments that help and hinder this process is essential if our programmes and policies are to produce the results that are wanted.

Telling a (good?) counterstory of aging: natural bodybuilding meets the narrative of decline

OBJECTIVES

In Western society, the narrative of decline dominates the aging process. We know very little about the complexities of how people resist this narrative. The purpose of this article is to understand how a group of mature natural bodybuilders resisted the narrative of decline.

METHODS

In-depth life story interviews were conducted with 13 natural bodybuilders aged between 50 and 73 years. Verbatim transcripts were produced and the data analyzed using a structural narrative analysis. A dialogical analysis was also utilized.

RESULTS

The participants' experiences did not fit with stereotypical assumptions about decline and deterioration in older age. They all told counterstories to "natural" aging, yet what differed was how the participants' counterstories resisted the narrative of decline and the level of resistance that they provided.

DISCUSSION

We advance knowledge in the fields of aging and narrative inquiry by revealing the multidimensionality of resistance. We demonstrated how participants storied resistance in different ways and the important implications this had for the way aging was understood and acted upon-by themselves and potentially by others. In addition to advancing theoretical knowledge, in this article, we also significantly contribute to understandings of the potential of narrative for changing human lives and behavior across the life course in more positive and nuanced ways.

Cross-cultural gerontology research methods: challenges and solutions

Cross-cultural research in the behavioural and social sciences uses data from several societies or distinct cultural groups to describe the diversity of human behaviour and test hypotheses about behaviour and culture. This paper reviews the historical development and current state of cross-cultural research in the social sciences and gerontology. Cross-cultural research in gerontology is important because the social processes of ageing vary. It aims to distinguish universal from culturally-specific processes and determine how cultural factors influence individual and population ageing. It has to overcome many challenges: how to design an equivalent and unbiased study, how to access different cultures, how to contextualise these cultures, and how to ensure that questions are meaningful for different cultures. Appropriate strategies include using an international multicultural research team, becoming familiar with the local culture, maintaining good relationships with community leaders, studying only those aspects of behaviour that are functionally equivalent while avoiding the idiosyncratic, using appropriate measures, and encouraging equal partnership and open communication among colleagues. Cross-cultural research has been growing and has become a basis for globally-relevant social gerontology. To highlight the complexity of cross-cultural research and lessons learnt from such research experience, this paper describes an example study of long-term care that involved researchers from more than 30 countries and from many disciplines.