“…In this position, he had advocated, to funders and policymakers, a focused approach to the development of basic definitions of aging, supported by fundamental research within and across diverse disciplines (Achenbaum :130–1). He was concerned that, since its establishment in 1974, the NIA had shifted its orientation from researching the mechanisms of aging to focusing on the diseases of aging, a process he later described as the “alzheimerization of aging” (Adelman ; see also Moreira and Palladino ).…”
Section: Unpacking Bamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…What is important is to look for the origin of each disease and then try to prevent it from happening. (Holliday in Rattan :320)As Paolo Palladino and I (Moreira and Palladino ) have argued, this critique of biomedicine strategically positioned aging researchers—and BA proponents—apart both from rejuvenation activists and “futurologists” (Turner ) and from the “disease‐mongering” practices of the medico‐industrial complex (Moynihan, Heath, and Henry ). Instead of promising to cure aging or disease, BA proponents portrayed themselves as part of a scientific focus on aging research that would bring about preventative, health‐enhancing interventions and technologies (Butler et al.…”
Section: Unpacking Bamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In particular, I suggest that while BA advocates propose to differentiate between individuals by deploying ranking standards that distally embody the technical expertise of biometricians, skeptics prefer to emphasize that instrumented measurements of aging and health must always rely on the close pastoral guidance of biomedical experts. I argue that these two stances on aging standards have interacted to reinforce normative positions for and against the social and political organization of contemporary biomedicine (Moreira and Palladino ).…”
One key debate within the sociology of aging and the life course over the past decade has been focused on understanding the extent to which there has been a shift from a reliance on chronological age to segment the life course and ascertain age‐specific norms, values, and expectations toward a destandardized life course in advanced economies. In this, little attention has been devoted to the infrastructural processes that would support such a transition: the technologies, standards, and conventions that would, in practice, equip a personalized, individualized management of the life course. This article focuses on one of such standards, “biological age” (BA), and the 40‐year controversy around the method and purpose of its measurement. Drawing on published research and archival and interview data collected in Europe and North America, the article suggests that the persistent uncertainty surrounding BA measurements is structured by differing interlocking relationships between normative ideals of the life course and methodological approaches to knowledge making to understand and manage the relationship among aging, health, and illness. Understanding this controversy and the configuration of normative and epistemic conventions that underpin its dynamic provides a unique lens on the complex interweaving relationship between expertise, scientific and technological standards, and social, normatively embedded age identities in contemporary societies.
“…In this position, he had advocated, to funders and policymakers, a focused approach to the development of basic definitions of aging, supported by fundamental research within and across diverse disciplines (Achenbaum :130–1). He was concerned that, since its establishment in 1974, the NIA had shifted its orientation from researching the mechanisms of aging to focusing on the diseases of aging, a process he later described as the “alzheimerization of aging” (Adelman ; see also Moreira and Palladino ).…”
Section: Unpacking Bamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…What is important is to look for the origin of each disease and then try to prevent it from happening. (Holliday in Rattan :320)As Paolo Palladino and I (Moreira and Palladino ) have argued, this critique of biomedicine strategically positioned aging researchers—and BA proponents—apart both from rejuvenation activists and “futurologists” (Turner ) and from the “disease‐mongering” practices of the medico‐industrial complex (Moynihan, Heath, and Henry ). Instead of promising to cure aging or disease, BA proponents portrayed themselves as part of a scientific focus on aging research that would bring about preventative, health‐enhancing interventions and technologies (Butler et al.…”
Section: Unpacking Bamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In particular, I suggest that while BA advocates propose to differentiate between individuals by deploying ranking standards that distally embody the technical expertise of biometricians, skeptics prefer to emphasize that instrumented measurements of aging and health must always rely on the close pastoral guidance of biomedical experts. I argue that these two stances on aging standards have interacted to reinforce normative positions for and against the social and political organization of contemporary biomedicine (Moreira and Palladino ).…”
One key debate within the sociology of aging and the life course over the past decade has been focused on understanding the extent to which there has been a shift from a reliance on chronological age to segment the life course and ascertain age‐specific norms, values, and expectations toward a destandardized life course in advanced economies. In this, little attention has been devoted to the infrastructural processes that would support such a transition: the technologies, standards, and conventions that would, in practice, equip a personalized, individualized management of the life course. This article focuses on one of such standards, “biological age” (BA), and the 40‐year controversy around the method and purpose of its measurement. Drawing on published research and archival and interview data collected in Europe and North America, the article suggests that the persistent uncertainty surrounding BA measurements is structured by differing interlocking relationships between normative ideals of the life course and methodological approaches to knowledge making to understand and manage the relationship among aging, health, and illness. Understanding this controversy and the configuration of normative and epistemic conventions that underpin its dynamic provides a unique lens on the complex interweaving relationship between expertise, scientific and technological standards, and social, normatively embedded age identities in contemporary societies.
“…Furthermore, despite their progressive credentials, the proponents of this evolutionary perspective could be regarded as arguing that the nascent welfare state was not an answer to the problems posed by increasing numbers of aged citizens, but part of the problem (see Porter, 1993). This disjunction between knowledge and power explains the belated institutionalization of research on the biology of ageing in the United Kingdom, which eventually led Medawar to complain that 'the great public and private agencies are not competing with each other in their endeavours to support research on ageing' (see Moreira and Palladino, 2009). …”
Section: August Weismann Weismannism and The Biology Of Ageing And Dmentioning
[[ageingbiologydeathGilles DeleuzeMichel FoucaultMartin Heidegger]]Biomedicine is today transforming the human condition, but how such transformation is to be understood is a matter of debate. I seek to contribute to the debate by focusing on recent developments within a relatively novel subfield of gerontology which is engaged in the bio-molecular and bio-demographic characterization of the processes associated with the development of the organism from birth to death. I argue that these developments aid understanding of the conceptual difficulties confronting neo-Darwinian biological thought and poststructuralist social theory as one decentres the organism and the other the subject.
“…This is manifest both in the biologisation of age-related conditions such as dementia and also in the biologisation of ageing itself as witnessed in the emergence of the sub-disciplinary fields of theoretical, molecular, biogerontology and cyto-gerontology (Kirkwood, 2002;Kirkwood, 2005;Kirkwood and Cremer, 1982;Moreira and Palladino, 2009). One of the major and rather controversial examples of this type of development is Aubrey D.N.J.de Grey's proposed 'strategies for engineered negligible senescence' (SENS).…”
This essay explores the kind of cultural and ideological work effected by the concept of dementia in contemporary popular culture in the global north through a critical reading of three 'genre' texts: Renny Harlin's action movie meets sci-fi, Deep Blue Sea (1999), Vernor Vinge's speculative fiction Rainbows End (2007) and Rupert Wyatt's sci-fi drama, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), all of which engage with the possibility of neural regeneration and a cure for dementia. Dominant epistemologies of dementia and ageing often focus on the potentially unsustainable social and economic burden presented by an ageing population and the obligation to meet the needs of older people living with impairments. Exploring the articulation of these economic and political arguments alongside an analysis of the promissory discourses of bio-gerontology and neuroscience, this essay considers the ways in which dementia has emerged as an over-determined point of tangency upon which particular ideas about ageing, mortality, human value, sustainability and futurity are played out. The analysis of the cultural texts presented here exposes the limits of market and individual oriented responses to dementia and ageing within the broader context of what Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams have described as the 'emerging crisis of work and surplus populations'. This paper argues that an exploration of the ideological fault-lines, imaginary resolutions and forms of wish fulfilment that emerge in the films and novel, enable us to identify the ideological limitations of the neoliberal discourses that circumscribe the ways in which we currently understand dementia and our imaginative investments in the promise of its cure.
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