Series editors’ preface

Summary

As the proportion of elders worldwide continues to expand, new issues and concerns for scholars, policy makers, and health and social care professionals emerge. Ageing in a Global Context is a book series, published by Policy Press in association with the British Society of Gerontology, which aims to influence and transform debates in what has become a fast-moving field in research and policy. The series seeks to achieve this in three main ways. First, by publishing books which rethink the key questions shaping debates in the study of ageing. This has become especially important given the restructuring of welfare states alongside the complex nature of population change, with both elements opening up the need to explore themes that go beyond traditional perspectives in social gerontology. Second, the series represents a response to the impact of globalisation and related processes, which have contributed to the erosion of the national boundaries that originally framed the study of ageing. From this has come the emergence of issues explored in various contributions to the series: for example, the impact of transnational migration, cultural diversity, new types of inequality and contrasting themes relating to ageing in rural and urban areas. Third, a key concern of the series is to explore interdisciplinary connections in gerontology. Contributions provide critical assessments of the disciplinary boundaries and territories influencing the study of ageing, creating in the process new perspectives and approaches relevant to the 21st century.

Given this context of increasing complexity that accompanies global ageing, we are pleased to be able to include in the series a book, one of the first of its kind, which takes a serious, interdisciplinary look at the intersections of power relations based on age, gender and sexualities. Editors Andrew King, Kathryn Almack and Rebecca L. Jones have brought together chapters that explore these intersections (as well as those related to other marginalised positions, such as race and ethnicity) from multiple disciplines, including sociology, social work, health, gerontology, policy studies, psychology, gender and sexualities studies, and socio-legal studies. The chapters employ various lenses to illuminate different concerns relating to ageing, gender and sexualities, thereby foregrounding the issues and perspectives of marginalised and often invisible populations.