Cultural Perspectives on Aging: A Different Approach to Old Age and Aging

Current demographic developments and change due to long life expectancies, low birth rates, changing family structures, and economic and political crises causing migration and flight are having a significant impact on intergenerational relationships, the social welfare system, the job market and what elderly people (can) expect from their retirement and environment. The socio-political relevance of the categories of 'age' and 'ageing' have been increasing and gaining much attention within different scholarly fields. However, none of the efforts to identify age-related diseases or the processes of ageing in order to develop suitable strategies for prevention and therapy have had any effect on the fact that attitudes against the elderly are based on patterns that are determined by parameters that or not biological or sociological: age(ing) is also a cultural fact. This book reveals the importance of cultural factors in order to build a framework for analyzing and understanding cultural constructions of ageing, bringing together scholarly discourses from the arts and humanities as well as social, medical and psychological fields of study. The contributions pave the way for new strategies of caring for elderly people.

Frontmatter --; Table of Contents --; Introduction: Perspectives on Cultural Aging at a Glance --; Ethics and Ageing --; Personal Growth, Creativity and Transcendence in Old Age. A Psychological Analysis --; Historical Considerations on the Ethics of Aging: Examples from the Sixteenth Century --; Electronic Health and Ambient Assisted Living: On the Technisation of Ageing and Responsibility --; Towards a New Theory of Ageism --; Not Your Grandmother's Ageism: Ageism Across the Life Course --; Confronting Loss when 'Life Changes in the Instant': Ageism and Successful Aging in the 'Case' of Joan Didion --; The Arts and Old Age --; Exploring Old Age Through the Theatre: Three British Senior Theatre Companies --; A Spinster with a Twist: The Amateur Sleuth and Perspectives on Ageing and Gender in the Sunday Philosophy Club Series --; ± 100: Old Age and New Photography --; Performing Age(ing): A Lecture Performance --; Opera for Every Age - Opera for People with Dementia --; About the Authors --; Index