Queering Ageism

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-224
Author(s):  
Linda M. Hess
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Cultural Visibility ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Age Studies

Queer theory is an effective tool for challenging ageist assumptions concerning the life course. Recent approaches by age studies scholars and queer theorists, such as Barbara Marshall, Linn Sandberg, Elizabeth Freeman, and Dustin B. Goltz, make use of a queer-theoretical lens to expose naturalized essentialist views of old age and the life course as normative constructions. As a significant way to heighten and shape cultural visibility, literary and filmic narratives play a crucial role in queering ageist cultural scripts of growing older and in highlighting the importance of non-heteronormative representations of aging. Leonora Carrington’s novel The Hearing Trumpet (1974) and Bruce LaBruce’s film Gerontophilia (2013) both exemplify, in their own ways, this process of queering as one of questioning, dismantling, and transforming essentialist assumptions about aging.

scholarly journals A Confluence of Policy Inequality: Health Disparities in Old Age Among American Indian and Alaska Native Populations

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 37-37
Author(s):  
Sadie Giles
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
Life Course ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Alaska Native ◽  
Political History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Life Course

Abstract Racial health disparities in old age are well established, and new conceptualizations and methodologies continue to advance our understanding of health inequality across the life course. One group that is overlooked in many of these analyses, however, is the aging American Indian/Native Alaskan (AI/NA) population. While scholars have attended to the unique health inequities faced by the AI/NA population as a whole due to its discordant political history with the US government, little attention has been paid to unique patterns of disparity that might exist in old age. I propose to draw critical gerontology into the conversation in order to establish a framework through which we can uncover barriers to health, both from the political context of the AI/NA people as well as the political history of old age policy in the United States. Health disparities in old age are often described through a cumulative (dis)advantage framework that offers the benefit of appreciating that different groups enter old age with different resources and health statuses as a result of cumulative inequalities across the life course. Adding a framework of age relations, appreciating age as a system of inequality where people also gain or lose access to resources and status upon entering old age offers a path for understanding the intersection of race and old age. This paper will show how policy history for this group in particular as well as old age policy in the United States all create a unique and unequal circumstance for the aging AI/NA population.

The Social Context and Resources of the Unmarried in Old Age

1986 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pat M. Keith
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Social Resources ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Role Transitions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Life Course

A model of singleness in later life was developed to show how the social context may influence the personal and social resources of older, unmarried persons. The unmarried (especially the divorced) will be an increasing proportion of the aged population in the future, and they will require more services than will the married. Role transitions of the unmarried over the life course, finances, health, and social relationships of older singles are discussed with implications for practice and future research.

scholarly journals Religion and old age

1998 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
GRACE DAVIE ◽  
JOHN VINCENT
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Human History ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
One Stage ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Crucial Part ◽  
Over Time

The interconnections between religion and old age are complex; the more so given that the concept of age itself has – for a large part of human history – been determined by religious understandings of life. In traditional societies, religion played a crucial part in structuring the transitions between one stage of the life and the next and in defining maturity and fulfilment. And up to a point it still does: in Western societies at the turn of the millennium the association of religious rituals with key moments in the life course – birth, adolescence, marriage and above all death – remains widespread. Such interconnections change over time, however; they also vary from place to place.

scholarly journals LONGITUDINAL TRAJECTORIES OF MULTIMORBIDITY IN OLD AGE: THE ROLE OF SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS OVER THE LIFE COURSE

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (suppl_1) ◽  
pp. 710-711
Author(s):  
S Dekhtyar ◽  
D Vetrano ◽  
A Marengoni ◽  
H Wang ◽  
K Pan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Sociodemographic Factors ◽  
Longitudinal Trajectories ◽  
The Life Course

Telomere Length in Old Age and Cholesterol Across the Life Course

2011 ◽  
Vol 59 (10) ◽  
pp. 1979-1981 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo E. Strandberg ◽  
Outi Saijonmaa ◽  
Reijo S. Tilvis ◽  
Kaisu H. Pitkälä ◽  
Arto Y. Strandberg ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Telomere Length ◽  
Old Age ◽  
The Life Course
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