Ageing, Anti-ageing, and Anti-anti-ageing: Who are the Progressives in the Debate on the Future of Human Biological Ageing?

Ageing without senescence: A critical absence in social gerontology?

This paper addresses the absence of the term 'senescence' in recent social science literature on ageing. The significance of this omission is considered in light of the emerging standpoint of gero-science, which argues that the central processes defining ageing are concerned with the rising probability of functional decline, development of degenerative disease and death. From this perspective, the separation of ageing and senescence sustains the myth that there exist forms of ageing that are exempt from senescence. The persistence of this myth underlies ageing studies, the sociology of later life and most social gerontology. While there have been undoubted benefits arising from this bracketing out of senescence, the argument of this paper is that the continuing advances associated with this standpoint are outweighed by the need to seriously engage with the consequences of contemporary societal ageing and the centrality of the processes of senescence in establishing an adequate understanding of ageing, its correlates and contingencies and its personal and social consequences.

Anti-aging technoscience & the biologization of cumulative inequality: Affinities in the biopolitics of successful aging

This paper charts the emergence of under-remarked affinities between contemporary anti-aging technoscience and some social scientific work on biological aging. Both have recently sought to develop increasingly sophisticated operationalizations of age, aging and agedness as biological phenomena, in response to traditional notions of normal and chronological aging. Rather than being an interesting coincidence, these affinities indicate the influence of a biopolitics of successful aging on government, industry and social science. This biopolitics construes aging as a personal project that is mastered through specific forms of entrepreneurial individual action, especially consumption practices. Social scientists must remain alert to this biopolitics and its influence on their own work, because the individualization of cumulative inequalities provides intellectual and moral justifications for anti-aging interventions that exploit those inequalities.

Unacknowledged distinctions: Corporeality versus embodiment in later life

The focus upon the body in the social sciences has had a growing influence in recent years on aging studies. Various terms have been used to explore the relationship between the body and society, of which 'corporeality' and 'embodiment' have taken pride of place. In this paper, we present the case for drawing a clear distinction between these two terms and the consequences that follow from it for the study of the body in social and cultural gerontology. Central to this distinction is the place of social agency. Corporeality, we suggest, refers to the role of the body as a set of structures whose identity and meaning is mediated by culture and society. Embodiment, in contrast, refers to the processes by which social actors realise distinction, identity and lifestyle through the medium of the body. Making this distinction sharpens the difference between studies that address self and others' reactions to physical changes in bodily function attributable to aging and/or age associated illness and impairment and studies that focus on the 'performance' of aging and the contested realisations of identity and lifestyle in later life. While the latter primarily reflects the concerns of 'third age' studies the former addresses the concerns more directly associated with 'fourth age' studies.

The experiences of close persons caring for people with chronic kidney disease stage 5 on conservative kidney management: contested discourses of ageing

Chronic kidney disease stage 5 is a global health challenge in the context of population ageing across the world. The range of treatment options available to patients at all ages has increased and includes transplantation and dialysis. However, these options are often seen as inappropriate for older frailer patients who are now offered the option of conservative kidney management, which is presented as a non-invasive alternative to dialysis, involving symptom management and addressing psychosocial needs. In this study, we conducted qualitative interviews with 26 close persons caring for someone with chronic kidney disease stage 5 in the United Kingdom to investigate how conservative kidney management interacted with implicit ideas of ageing, in both the experience of conservative kidney management and the understanding of the prognosis and future care of the kidney disease. Our findings highlighted participant confusion about the nature of conservative kidney management, which stems from an initial lack of clarity about how conservative kidney management differed from conventional treatments for chronic kidney disease stage 5. In particular, some respondents were not aware of the implicit palliative nature of the intervention or indeed the inevitable end-of-life issues. Although these findings can be situated within the context of communication failure, we would further argue that they also bring to the surface tensions in the discourses surrounding ageing and old age, drawing on the use of a ‘natural’ and a ‘normal’ paradigm of ageing. In the context of chronic kidney disease stage 5, more patients are being dialysed at older ages, but conservative kidney management is being advanced as a better option than dialysis in terms of quality of life and experience. However, in doing so, conservative kidney management implicitly draws on a notion of older age that echoes natural ageing rather than advocate a more interventionist approach. The role of discourses of ageing in the provision of treatments for conservative kidney management has not previously been acknowledged, and this article addresses this gap.

Neuroculture, active ageing and the 'older brain': problems, promises and prospects

This article explores the characteristics of a newly emergent 'neuroculture' and its relationship to cultures of ageing; in particular, the social meanings associated with 'active ageing' and 'cognitive health' and the discourses and sciences around memory and the 'ageing brain'. The argument proposes a critical perspective on this relationship by looking at the shifting boundaries between standards of normality and abnormality, values of health and illness, practices of therapy and enhancement, and the lines demarcating Third Age (healthy, active and agentic) and Fourth Age (dependency, loss and decline) periods of ageing. Conclusions offer further reflections on the complex questions that arise regarding expectations, hopes and ethics in relation to the promises and perils of a neurocultural future.