Hostname: page-component-6766d58669-mzsfj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-19T20:22:58.041Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Governing the ageing body: explicating the negotiation of ‘positive’ ageing in daily life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2018

RACHAEL PACK ,
CARRI HAND ,
DEBBIE LALIBERTE RUDMAN  and
SUZANNE HUOT
RACHAEL PACK*
Affiliation:
Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
CARRI HAND
Affiliation:
School of Occupational Therapy, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
DEBBIE LALIBERTE RUDMAN
Affiliation:
School of Occupational Therapy, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
SUZANNE HUOT
Affiliation:
Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
*
Address for correspondence: Rachael Pack, Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research, University of Western Ontario, Lawson Hall, Room 3241, London, ON, Canada N6A 3K7 E-mail: rpack@uwo.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Positive ageing discourses have proliferated in Western nations, forming key aspects of structured mandates for how to think about, and act towards, ageing bodies. As interpretive resources, positive ageing discourses shape how adults growing older think about themselves, their bodies and the bodies of others in relation to the process of ageing and the imperative to ‘age well’. Informed by governmentality, this paper considers how positive ageing discourses function as technologies of government to inform and direct conduct. Drawing on in-depth narrative data, this analysis traces how ageing citizens take up and negotiate positive ageing discourses in their everyday lives, drawing attention to the intensive work, inexorable focus on the body and numerous resources that the enactment of positive ageing requires. Specifically, this analysis illuminates the interplay between the lived experiences of ageing and the socio-culturally structured mandates that shape how ageing and ageing bodies are conceptualised and approached, and draws attention to the moments of tension that arise out of such interplay. We suggest that these moments of tension highlight how the bodywork practices that older adults rigorously and continuously engage in are not so much directed towards the pursuit of ageless ageing, but rather are a response to the inescapable threat of dependency, decline and loss of agency, and thus operate to affirm ageist underpinnings of positive ageing discourses.

Keywords

positive ageingnarrativegovernmentalitycitizenship

Information

Type
Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 39 , Issue 9 , September 2019 , pp. 2085 - 2108
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Asquith, N. 2009. Positive ageing, neo-liberalism and Australian sociology. Journal of Sociology, 45, 3, 255–69.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M. 2005. Narrative discourse and identities. In Meister, J. C., Kindt, T. and Schernus, W. (eds), Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity. Walter de Gruyter, New York, 213–36.Google Scholar
Bartky, S. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Bordo, S. 1993. Unbearable Weight, Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. University of California, Berkeley, California.Google Scholar
Boudiny, K. 2013. ‘Active ageing’: from empty rhetoric to effective policy tool. Ageing & Society, 33, 6, 1077–98.Google Scholar
Bryant, L. L., Corbett, K. K. and Kutner, J. S. 2001. In their own words: a model of health aging. Social Science and Medicine, 53, 7, 927–41.Google Scholar
Calasanti, T. 2005. Ageism, gravity, and gender: experiences of aging bodiest. Generations, 29, 3, 8–12.Google Scholar
Calasanti, T. and King, N. 2005. Firming the floppy penis. Men and Masculinities, 8, 1, 3–23.Google Scholar
Cardona, B. 2008. ‘Healthy ageing’ policies and anti-ageing ideologies and practices: on the exercise of responsibility. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 11, 4, 475–83.Google Scholar
Chase, S. E. 2011. Narrative inquiry: still a field in the making. In Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S. (eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. Fourth edition, Sage, London, 421–34.Google Scholar
Dillaway, H. and Byrnes, M. 2009. Reconsidering successful aging. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 28, 6, 702–22.Google Scholar
Featherstone, M. and Hepworth, M. 1991. The mask of ageing and the postmodern lifecourse. In Featherstone, M., Hepworth, M. and Turner, B. S. (eds), The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. Sage, London, 371–89.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1983. The subject and power. In Dreyfus, H. L. and Rabinow, P. (eds), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 208–16.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1991. Governmentality (translator P. Pasquino). In Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, with Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 87–104.Google Scholar
Gilleard, C. J. and Higgs, P. 2000. Cultures of Ageing: Self, Citizen, and the Body. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Gilleard, C. and Higgs, P. 2010. Ageing without agency: theorizing the fourth age. Aging & Mental Health, 14, 2, 121–28.Google Scholar
Gilleard, C. and Higgs, P. 2017. Ageing, corporeality and social divisions in later life. Ageing & Society, 37, 8, 1681–702.Google Scholar
Guell, C., Shefer, G., Griffin, S. and Ogilvie, D. 2001. ‘Keeping your body and mind active’: an ethnographic study of aspirations for healthy ageing. BMJ Open, 6, 1, e009973.Google Scholar
Higgs, P., Leontowitsch, M., Stevenson, F. and Jones, I. R. 2009. Not just old and sick – the will to health in later life. Ageing & Society, 29, 5, 687–707.Google Scholar
Jones, I. R. and Higgs, P. F. 2010. The natural, the normal and the normative: contested terrains in ageing and old age. Social Science and Medicine, 71, 8, 1513–9.Google Scholar
Katz, S. 2000. Busy bodies: activity, ageing, and the management of everyday life. Journal of Aging Studies, 14, 2, 135–52.Google Scholar
Katz, S. 2001. Growing older without ageing? Positive ageing, anti-ageism, and anti-ageing. Generations, 25, 4, 27–32.Google Scholar
Katz, S. and Laliberte Rudman, D. 2005. Cultural Aging: Life Course, Lifestyle, and Senior Worlds. Broadview Press, Toronto.Google Scholar
Katz, S. and Marshall, B. 2003. New sex for old: lifestyle, consumerism, and the ethics of ageing well. Journal of Aging Studies, 17, 1, 3–16.Google Scholar
Katz, S. and Peters, K. R. 2008. Enhancing the mind? Memory medicine, dementia, and the ageing brain. Journal of Aging Studies, 22, 4, 348–55.Google Scholar
Kemp, C. and Denton, M. 2003. Allocation of responsibility for later life: Canadian reflections on the roles of individuals, government, employers and families. Ageing & Society, 23, 6, 737–60.Google Scholar
Laliberte Rudman, D. 2006. Shaping the active, autonomous and responsible modern retiree: an analysis of discursive technologies and their links with neo-liberal political rationality. Ageing & Society, 26, 2, 181–201.Google Scholar
Laliberte Rudman, D. 2015. Embodying positive ageing and neoliberal rationality: talking about the ageing body within narratives of retirement. Journal of Aging Studies, 34, 10–20.Google Scholar
Laliberte Rudman, D., Huot, S. and Dennhardt, S. 2009. Shaping ideal places for retirement: occupational possibilities within contemporary media. Journal of Occupational Science, 16, 1, 18–24.Google Scholar
Lupton, D. 1992. Discourse analysis: a new methodology for understanding the ideologies of health and illness. Australian Journal of Public Health, 16, 2, 145–50.Google Scholar
Lupton, D. 1995. The Imperative of Health: Public Health and the Regulated Body. Sage, London.Google Scholar
Mendes, F. 2013. Active ageing: a right or a duty? Health Sociology Review, 22, 2, 174–85.Google Scholar
Moore, S. 2010. Is the healthy body gendered? Toward a feminist critique of the new paradigm of health. Body & Society, 16, 2, 95–118.Google Scholar
Petersen, A. and Lupton, D. 1996. The New Public Health: Health and the Self in the Age of Risk. Sage, London.Google Scholar
Rose, N. 1996. Governing ‘advanced’ liberal democracies. In Barry, A., Osborne, T. and Rose, N. (eds), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 37–64.Google Scholar
Rose, N. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. Free Association Books, London.Google Scholar
Rose, N. S. 2001. Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-first Century. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Rowe, J. W. and Kahn, R. L. 1997. Successful aging. The Gerontologist, 37, 4, 433–40.Google Scholar
Smith, J. A., Braunack-Mayer, A., Wittert, G. and Warin, M. 2007. ‘I've been independent for so damn long!’: independence, masculinity and ageing in a help seeking context. Journal of Aging Studies, 21, 4, 325–35.Google Scholar
Stenner, P., McFarquhar, T. and Bowling, A. 2010. Older people and ‘active ageing’: subjective aspects of ageing actively. Journal of Health Psychology, 16, 3, 467–77.Google Scholar
Stevenson, F. and Higgs, P. 2011. ‘Ageing well’: competing discourses and tensions in the management of knee pain. Health Sociology Review, 20, 4, 372–80.Google Scholar
Timonen, V. 2016. Beyond Successful and Active Ageing: A Theory of Model Ageing. Policy Press, Bristol, UK.Google Scholar
Tulle-Winton, E. 1999. Growing old and resistance: towards a new cultural economy of old age? Ageing & Society, 19, 3, 281–99.Google Scholar
Zinn, J. O. 2005. The biographical approach: a better way to understand behaviour in health and illness. Health, Risk & Society, 7, 1, 1–9.Google Scholar