Negotiating Ageing: Cultural Adaptation to the Prospect of a Long Life

ISBN-13: 9781138947757 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 178 str.

Simon Biggs

Opis

The demographic shift that is occurring as a result of an ageing international population brings with it the challenge of cultural adaptation as we begin to rethink the purpose of a long life, intergenerational relations, and the social connectedness and value of older adults. Solutions which have been proposed in the policy arena tend to be constructed around assumptive realities of long life, falling short of proposing the essential cultural adaptations required for societies where the generational groups have become roughly the same size. Utilising a psycho-social perspective that is critical to any understanding that links personal experience to wider social currents, Cultural Adaptations for an Ageing Population: Managing Identities for a Long Life:

• Critically evaluates four of the most dominant contemporary discourses on the question of long life (extended working life, spiritual awareness, purposelessness and social connection), discussing their advantages and disadvantages as solutions to the questions of personal and social identity
• Explores some of the key conceptual tools for the reconceptualization of the purpose of long life, including the construction of time, ideas of the natural and un-natural, and definitions of social purpose and value
• Examines the implications of cultural adaption for the public spheres of policy, business and politics as well as the private spheres of identity, meaning and purpose.

With the cultural landscape moving away from traditional interpretations of specialist gerontology as the questions of adult ageing are of growing interest to a number of groups, this book is essential reading for social workers, aged care nurses, counsellors and psychologists, as well as those working in the fields of social and public policy.

Spis treści

Foreword; Acknowledgements; Chapter 1: The Promise of a Long Life; Chapter 2: Interrogating Personal and Intergenerational Ageing; Chapter 3: Work to the Rescue?; Chapter 4 Is Work Good or Bad for Health?; Chapter 5: Spirit, Belief and the In-between; Chapter 6: Lifecourse, Gerotranscendence and Wisdom; Chapter 7: The Ageing Body, the Social and the Natural; Chapter 8: Anti Ageing; Chapter 9: Dementia; Chapter 10: Family and Generations; Conclusions; Index

O autorze

Simon Biggs, PhD. Professor of Gerontology & Social Policy
School of Social & Political Sciences, Melbourne University, Australia.