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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
This first chapter is concerned with the contemporary positioning of the body within the social sciences and the implications of the ‘somatic turn’ for constructing a new, culturally informed approach to ageing (Gergen and Gergen 2000; Gilleard and Higgs 2000). Most conventional accounts of ageing locate it within the body, where it is expressed as a universal, intrinsic, non-reversible and ultimately deleterious process of decline (Strehler 1962). Because bodily ageing is formulated as a more or less unmediated process of corporeal decline, psychosocial attempts to present ageing in a more positive light have focused on its less ‘corporeal’ aspects, through concepts such as ‘seniority’, ‘integrity’, ‘wisdom’ or ‘longevity’. These attempts, which suffuse modern social gerontology, draw upon a much older tradition, dating back at least to Cicero's essay on old age, whereby (mostly men's) ageing and old age are valued because they reflect or ‘embody’ the accumulation of cultural or symbolic capital in the form of wisdom, maturity or experience. With the coming of Christianity, ageing acquired an additional meaning when it was represented as the gradual ‘spiritual’ liberation of the individual from the concerns and constraints of his once youthful erring body.
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