Böcker av Chris Gilleard

Using a combination of statistical analysis of census material and social history, this book describes the ageing of Ireland's population from the start of the Union up to the introduction of the old age pension in 1908.

In this radical re-examination of the nature of old age, Paul Higgs and Chris Gilleard reveal the emergence of a 'fourth age' that embodies the most feared and marginalised aspects of old age, conceptually linked to and yet distinct from traditional models of old age.

Ageing, Corporeality and Embodiment outlines and develops an argument about the emergence of a new ageing during the second half of the twentieth century and its realisation through the processes of embodiment. The authors argue that ageing as a unitary social process and agedness as a distinct social location have lost much of their purchase on the social imagination. Instead, this work asserts that later life has become as much a field for not becoming old as of old age. The volume locates the origins of this transformation in the cultural ferment of the 1960s, when new forms of embodiment concerned with identity and the care of the self arose as mass phenomena. Over time, these new forms of embodiment have been extended, changing the traditional relationship between body, age and society by making struggles over the care of the self central to the cultures of later life.

An examination of age and ageing in terms of the key preoccupations of contemporary sociology - citizenship, the body and the self. The book looks at these themes in relation to specific topics such as: mental health; fitness and consumption; and combining social theory with reality.