The editors are to be congratulated on bringing together some of the key academics both from the United Kingdom and outside to contribute chapters on key topics in Gerontology. With a useful index and extensive references for each chapter, it will provide a useful starting point for researchers. With 50 chapters and 71 authors, it covers many aspects of ageing, ending, perhaps appropriately, with cemeteries.
The authors say in the blurb on the back of the book:
Later life is changing under the impact of demographic, social and cultural shifts. No longer confined to the sphere of social welfare, they are now studied within a wider cultural framework that encompasses new experiences and new modes of being. Drawing on the influences from the arts and humanities, and deploying diverse methodologies – visual, literary, spatial – and theoretical perspectives, Cultural Gerontology has brought new aspects of later life into view.
It is not strictly accurate to say that previous books were focused on social welfare. For example, one of the authors of a chapter, Christina Victor, published a well-rounded account of ageing in Old Age in Modern Society in 1992, as did many others.
This book is not always an easy read and it would have been helpful to have had definitions of many of the words and concepts that are used. Indeed, even a definition of Cultural Gerontology itself would have been useful. Chapter 1 talks about ‘the cultural turn’ which would have been helpful to unpack. It is always good to explain what is meant by terms. This could have been done in the text or elsewhere. The book does assume a prior knowledge of ageing and what has already been written.
The book is divided into five parts. Each one has a useful short chapter by the editors. There is some overlap. For example, digital issues are covered in two sections. In some cases this overlap is inevitable as, for example, issues of gender come into many of the chapters. The first part is ‘Theory and Methods’ which introduces the different disciplines involved – history, literature, the theatre, film, popular music, art and the body, visual methods, ethnography and narrative, and biography. The second is ‘Embodiment’ and covers the body including appearance, hair, dress, the falling body, dementia, and suffering and pain.
The third is ‘Identities and Social Relations’. This includes sexuality, grandparenting, widowhood, loneliness and social isolation, the fourth age, cultures of care and ethnicity. The fourth is ‘Consumption and Leisure’. This brings together chapters on retirement, money, possessions, gardening, sport and physical activity, travel and tourism, youth culture, celebrity culture, representations of ageing in the media and later-life creativity. The final one is ‘Time and Space’. This contains chapters on global and local ties, time, transitions, rural and urban ageing, lifestyle migration, digital technologies, meanings of home, public places and cemeteries.
I was surprised to see no reference (apart from a minor one about social care) to ethical issues.
This book is useful as a reference and for many of the authors updates their previous research (e.g. Sheila Peace's on Home) but it is expensive and heavy. Definitely one for the library though.
