Youthfulness and agelessness: a comment

Abstract

In recent years, we gerontologists have been forced to re-examine the conceptual base of our work – both in the wake of developments in postmodernist thought, and following the emergence of ageism as a media issue. Two particular problems have been addressed: one is how we recognise and define age in the context of the partly-disaggregated individual human being: body, mind, self, identity, etc. The second is how we relate to popular sentiments, judgements and objectives regarding age: thinking positively, being prejudiced, remaining active, being a burden, etc. On both fronts there has been a shift away from emphasising the significance of age, and one often reads such arguments as: people do not change, they remain the same; but they can continue to develop; but there is a massive diversity; so we must not generalise about age or prejudge older people; and so on. It is not difficult to associate these trends with powerful ideological movements. There is a third issue that lies just beneath the surface: how we gerontologists theorise our own personal experience of ageing.