Ageing abjection and embodiment in the fourth age

Gilleard, Chris; Higgs, Paul

doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2010.08.018

Cited by 147 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…This separation allows young older adults to preserve their status by comparing themselves to the "fourth age," which represents "real old age" and is characterized by frailty, abjection and the "othering" of the self. This results in the defining of older adults by their alienation and vulnerability as well as their exclusion from society (Gilleard and Higgs 2011;Higgs and Gilleard 2014).…”

Section: Strategies To Maintain Positive Self-identity According To Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Origins of Ageism at the Individual Level

Lev

Wurm

Ayalon

2018

International Perspectives on Aging

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Section: Strategies To Maintain Positive Self-identity According To Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Origins of Ageism at the Individual Level

Lev

Wurm

Ayalon

2018

International Perspectives on Aging

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“…The differences that come with ageing are thus altogether rejected and rendered abject (this particularly refers to the changes that emerge in the so-called fourth age; cf. Higgs 2011 andSchwaiger 2006). Although it may seem as if discourses of successful ageing to a greater extent affirm and embrace the differences of ageing, it is rather that these discourses encourage subjects to fight all signs of ageing by remaining active, autonomous and in control (Rozanova 2010;Rudman 2006).…”

Section: Critical Gerontological and Feminist Perspectives On Embodimentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affirmative old age - the ageing body and feminist theories on difference

Sandberg

2013

Int J Ageing Later Life

114

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Discourses on old age and ageing are framed in narrow and binary ways, either as a decline narrative or through discourses of positive and successful ageing. The decline narrative, on the one hand, is highly centred on the decline of the ageing body as frail, leaky and unbounded, and on how old age is characterised by non-productivity, increasing passivity and dependency. Discourses on successful ageing, on the other hand, rely heavily on neo-liberal imperatives of activity, autonomy and responsibility. In successful ageing, the specificities of ageing bodies are largely overlooked while the capacity of the old person to retain a youthful body, for example, with the aid of sexuopharmaceuticals, is celebrated. This article argues for the need of a theorising of old age that goes beyond the binaries of decline and success. Drawing on the work of feminist corpomaterialists Rosi Braidotti and Elisabeth Grosz, the article proposes affirmative old age as an alternative conceptualisation of old age.

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“…This social construction of the Fourth Age as a loss of agency and bodily self-control is often linked to frailty. Frailty is therefore frequently conceptualised as an antonym for successful ageing (Richardson, Karunananthan, & Bergman, 2011) a separating practice and a central term for those limiting conditions of the (ageing) body (Gilleard & Higgs, 2010a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Living on the margin: Understanding the experience of living and dying with frailty in old age

Nicholson

Meyer

Flatley

et al. 2012

Social Science & Medicine

128

176

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This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. The social gerontological literature suggests that constructs of frailty are diverse. Gilleard and Higgs (2010b) posit that culturally those deemed frail have few self-empowering narratives. They argue that frailty is held within a social imaginary as a black hole, a socially void space into which older people are sequestrated away to decay and die. Thus within a social imaginary frailty, like a black hole, is both unknowable and a space from which there is no return. Permanent repository link 4Hockey and James (2003) argue that social identities in late old age can be conceptualised as liminal. Liminality (after Turner (1974)) is a threshold space, a transitional point between social structures. Such spaces are fluid, allow for the potential redefinition of self-identity and can even be a position of power. Thus although older 'liminal' individuals are placed in an uncertain outsider status this social positioning can provide a space from which "weak" elders exert power. The vulnerability of old age can expose the very decline and dependency from which wider society seeks to distance itself. Thus identities are not fixed nor necessarily related to dominant understandings of a declining body. Grenier (2006bGrenier ( , 2007 develops this thesis in her work on the subjective experience of older frail people. She and others (Becker, 1994;Kaufman, 1994) argue that frail elders themselves differentiate between being and feeling frail. The label of frailty is actively resisted as elders distinguish between the body one is (selfidentity) and the body one has -a physical, vulnerable, and objectified social identity.Within Western welfare policy and practice frailty is increasingly used as a means of classification, to prioritise and fund care. Indeed, clinically frailty is often used as a This paper draws on findings from a longitudinal study of the subjective experience of being a frail older person living at home. The aim of the study was to understand the experience of home-dwelling older people living with frailty over time in order to develop the empirical evidence base for this group and to consider more fully how narratives of frailty can shape person-centred care provision. MethodsTo capture the dimensions of social, psychological and physical frailty, the research design used a combined qualitative psychosocial method. Psychosocial research conceptualises experience as a constant and dynamic communication between internal psychological and external sociological dimensions manifest through unconscious or feeling states, and conscious communication (Hollway, 2004;Roseneil, 2006 Trust. All participants received written and verbal information about the study and informed consent was confirmed at each cycle of data collection. All were assured of confidentiality and that pseudonyms would be used in all research reports. Data collectionTwo psychosocial narrative approaches; the Biographic Narrat...

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Ageing abjection and embodiment in the fourth age

Cited by 147 publications

References 12 publications

Origins of Ageism at the Individual Level

Origins of Ageism at the Individual Level

Affirmative old age - the ageing body and feminist theories on difference

Living on the margin: Understanding the experience of living and dying with frailty in old age

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