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ageing can be represented in modern action cinema. The hypermasculine ageing body of the franchise’s lead actor, iconic action star Sylvester Stallone playing Barney Ross, is the main spectacle of the film series. This is in keeping with the historic critical focus that Stallone’s muscular body has received throughout his film career, as ‘Reviewers have on the whole refused the attempt
7 Ageing, disability and policy Eamon O’Shea Introduction One in ten Europeans has a disability and that percentage is likely to increase along with the ageing of the population in the coming decades. For e xample, there will be more than twice as many people aged 80 years or older in 2050 across OECD countries than there are currently, and their share of the population will rise from 4% in 2010 to 10% in 2050 (OECD, 2013). Between one quarter and one half of these people will need help in their daily lives, due to reduced functional and cognitive capabilities
IV AGEING, LOSS, RECIDIVISM . . . Domine, refugium . . . I look into my glass, And view my wasting skin, And say, ‘Would God it came to pass My heart had shrunk as thin!’ Thomas Hardy (1898) The crumbling foundations were solid in my childhood. Is this ageing, or something that happens outside time? Temporal? Reincarnated, I can expect another exposure in a different body. Ageing fuels visionary dreariness, but the spots in time are empty. The child is long in the tooth, the curtains are drawn. Marginalise, contain. The Home. The piano. Dancing with hip
I've always taken parts that attracted me. The age factor has never been a consideration … I just ask: would playing this character be stimulating for me? 1 Introduction: ageing stars Connery's remarks in this epigraph are somewhat disingenuous – there were many other considerations in his choice of role
8 Closing scenes: the ageing actress If she was lucky an actress may have avoided accidental injury at work or disaster while travelling, but she was not immune to the passing of time. The age at which a woman was regarded as old was as much subject to cultural belief as it was to her longevity or physical condition. For Queen Victoria, it was after she was widowed at the age of forty-two (Chase, 2009: 154, 159). For many of her subjects, there was a less clear-cut transition between middle and old age. Nevertheless, the overwhelming consensus was that once a
Seeking to better understand what it means to grow older in contemporary Britain from the perspective of older people themselves, this richly detailed ethnographic study engages in debates over selfhood and people’s relationships with time. Based on research conducted in an English former coal mining village, the book focuses on the everyday experiences of older people living there. It explores how the category of old age comes to be assigned and experienced in daily life through multiple registers of interaction. These include ‘memory work’ about people, places and webs of relations in a postindustrial setting that has undergone profound social transformation. Challenging both the notion of a homogenous relationship with time across generations and the idea of a universalised middle-aged self, the author argues that the complex interplay of social, cultural and physical attributes of ageing means that older people can come to occupy a different position in relation to time and to the self than younger people. This account provides fascinating insight into what is at stake for the ageing self in regards to how people come to know, experience and dwell in the world. It describes the ways in which these distinctive forms of temporality and narrativity also come to be used against older people, denigrated socially in some contexts as ‘less-than-fully adult’. This text will be of great interest to researchers and students in anthropology, sociology, human geography and social gerontology working on interests in selfhood, time, memory, the anthropology of Britain and the lived experience of social change.
The fact that gerontology has been gaining in importance since the 1970s is scarcely surprising. Most people, at least in the West, are living longer, giving us all a stake in understanding the specific problems of ageing. Moreover, we live in a highly age-conscious world where, from the moment we enter primary school, we are conditioned to be evaluated, and to
Compact on Refugees’, submitted by the NGO Committee on Ageing to the UNHCR, included references noting that older refugees have rights and specific age-related needs that the law ought to accommodate (UNHCR, 2018 ). That document recognises heterogeneity and intersectionality among older persons, and the importance of upholding their autonomy and participation in decision making
the most appropriate time. I’m always amused when footballers write their autobiography in their 20s! You have to have a hinterland to draw on in order to make sense of things. However, being a man from the Global North and writing on this subject, it’s a reflection of ‘humanitarianism’ during my lifetime. It is changing and needs to change radically. By writing a memoir on the subject, it might serve to cement some of the problems around ageing men from a rich country coming to the plight of the poor in the Global South. I’ve tried to avoid it, but I doubt I have
The politics of old age in the twenty-first century is contentious, encompassing ideological debates about how old age is conceptualised and the rights and welfare entitlements of individuals in later life. Synthesising key theoretical writings in political science, social/critical gerontology and cultural sociology, the book provides an insight into the complexity of older people’s identity politics, its relationship with age-based social policy and how the power of older people’s interest organisations, their legitimacy and existence remain highly contingent on government policy design, political opportunity structures and the prevailing cultural and socio-economic milieu. The book situates the discussion in the international context and outlines findings of an Irish case study which explores the evolution of older people’s interest organisation in Ireland from their inception in the mid-1990s to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The book is essential reading for policymakers and organisations interested in ageing, policy and the political process and for students of ageing, social policy and political sociology.