Shaping Ageing: Social Transformations and Enduring Meanings, edited by Adriana Teodorescu and Dan Chiribucă, is part of Routledge's ‘Social Perspectives on Ageing and Later Life’ which focuses on the social elements of ageing and later life. The aim of this book is to reflect on the theories and narratives of ageing, as well as the impact of the living environment on identity and the experiences of ageing. The book consists of two parts of five chapters each. Part 1, ‘Theories and Narratives of Ageing and Old Age’, is mainly theoretical, whilst Part 2, ‘Ageing and Old Age in Different Spaces’, uses empirical studies to explore the relationship between ageing and their contexts.
The opening chapter of Part 1, ‘The Philosophic Homework of Later Life: On Narrative, Wisdom, and the Positive Potential of Growing Old’, written by William L. Randall, is focused on reflection processes associated with ageing. Reflecting on stories that form people is crucial but is an often overlooked part of the ageing process. This narrative and philosophic ‘homework’ can be supported by narrative openness and care, which is elucidated with possible examples for narrative reflection in this chapter. Chapter 2, ‘Gerontophobia: The Cultural Roots of Old-age Anxiety in Contemporary Society’, by Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Adriana Teodorescu, notes that ‘gerontophobia’ is rooted in thanatophobia, the fear of death. This chapter discusses its influence on social exclusion of older people and ageism, while also exploring the discrepancy between people having longer, healthier lives but both fearing and underestimating old age. The third chapter, ‘Cougars and Crones: Maverick Archetypes for Older Women’, discusses the challenges faced by older women as they grapple with their image in society. The author, Amanda Barusch, draws upon personal experiences and cultural analysis to comment on the role of these archetypes in reshaping society's perception of older women. Chapter 4, ‘Visual Representations of Older Persons: Current Discourses and Their Historical Roots’, authored by Eugène Loos and Jo Thijssen, uses semiotic analysis of visual representations to study the depiction of older people throughout time and their influence on the narrative and depiction of older people today. It would be beneficial to place this chapter forward in the book as it gives background on the historical narrative of ageing that can be used to interpret the second and third chapters. In Chapter 5, ‘“Positive Ageing Happens in the West”: Ageing Perceptions and Active Ageing Policy Implementation Among Romanian General Practitioners’, Irena Catrinel Crăciun illustrates that negative stereotypes of ageing are dominant among Romanian health professionals. She highlights the implications and the ineffectiveness of the ‘overoptimistic’ Western active ageing concepts when interpreted in different cultural contexts.
Opening Part 2, Chapter 6, ‘“It's Okay to Color Outside the Lines”: Living, Ageing and Dying in a Hospice “Home”’ by E. Moore Quinn, uses autoethnography to reflect on her experience of having a parent in a US hospice. She describes the efforts of family members and the hospice to ‘preserve continuous personhood’, demonstrating how the living, ageing and dying continuum can be approached. The seventh chapter, by Renske Claasje Visser, ‘Ageing Behind Locked Doors: Growing Older in Secure Mental Health Care and Prison Settings’, explores institutions, where a much lower age (50 years) is considered ‘old’. Comparing both kinds of institutions on ageing experiences offers a unique insight into a ‘hidden’ world with a shared problem: residents’ entitled care needs may not always be met. In the eighth chapter, ‘Providing Elderly Care in Precarious Settings: A Case Study in Lima, Peru’, Magdalena Zegarra Chiappori uses autoethnography to illustrate the ageing process in a care institution in a disadvantaged area in Lima. She describes the care that staff offer with limited resources. The care is labelled as biopolitical, with the author describing frequent mistreatment and residents mainly regarded as objects of care. In the ninth chapter, ‘Risks and Promises of Being Old in Social Media’, by Adriana Teodorescu and Dan Chiribucă, interviews with older Romanians were conducted regarding their perception of social media as a place for social inclusion. Their results describe both the mixed feelings about perceived advantages and disadvantages and the strain of being online on their offline life. In the last chapter, ‘Beauty in Later Life: Voices from Older Korean Women in New Zealand’, Saemyi Chung uses interviews to explore the meaning of beauty. The results show a variety of perceived beauty norms in later life of a population that is trying to fit into two distinct cultures, while also discussing their reasons for adapting these beauty practices.
Given the writers’ diverse research fields, the reader can view the ageing process through different lenses. Exemplifying the vastness of the research on the meaning of old age, the writers and editors succeed in not rendering the content insignificant. The book is clearly structured and offers variety and depth while remaining reader-friendly, particularly owing to the blend of both theoretical and empirical chapters. The authors’ personal viewpoints in many of the chapters make the content and the experiences more human. However, the diversity of backgrounds might also present challenges for certain readers, as terms that are common within specific research fields are assumed to be general knowledge, which could leave readers without the necessary background to fully comprehend all the content.
While the book tries to convey different cultural and national viewpoints, it misses the opportunity to include alternative contexts in one of the empirical or even theoretical chapters. As Chapter 5, for instance, illustrated that views on ageing differ between regions, the reader would expect to explore views on ageing from around the world, although the reader's curiosity will partly be satisfied by the chapters on Romanian, Peruvian and Korean-New Zealand experiences. Naturally, not all cultures can be represented in such a compact book, but some diversity would have been preferable as, for instance, the African continent and Middle Eastern region are barely acknowledged. Additionally, when mentioning older people, the book does not use consistent terminology, which can be forgiven as it is divided into clear, separate chapters. The use of non-age-inclusive language like ‘elderly’ in some chapters, however, should be avoided.
Despite these shortcomings, anyone interested in gerontology, regardless of their background, will benefit from reading the book. It is well written, encourages reflection, and is an astute guide to immersing oneself in meaning and perceptions regarding the complex and multi-layered process of ageing.
