Chris Gilleard

Aging without agency: theorizing the fourth age.

This article looks at the “fourth age” as a manifestation of the fragmentation of “old age”. We argue that the fourth age emerges from the institutionalization of the infirmities of old age set against the appearance of a third-age culture that negates past representations of old age. We outline the historical marginalization of old age from early modern society to the contemporary concentration of infirmity within long-term care which makes of old age an undesirable “social imaginary”. As “old age” fades from the social world, we liken this to the impact of a “black hole” distorting the gravitational field surrounding it, unobservable except for its traces. Within this perspective, the fourth age can be understood by examining not the experience itself but its impact on the discourses that surround and orientate themselves to it.

The third age: class, cohort or generation?

In this paper we consider some of the ways that the third age can be thought about and studied. Taking the work of Peter Laslett as our key source, we explore his ‘aspirational’ approach toward redefining post-working life and look at some of its limitations as both definition and explanation. There is a need for a more sociologically informed approach to the third age, and we outline three potentially important structures that might better explain it – class, birth cohort, and generation. Whilst it might seem attractive to see the third age as a class-determined status, based on the material and social advantages accruing to people who have retired from well-paid positions in society, the historical period in which the third age has emerged makes this explanation less than adequate. Equally a cohort-based explanation, locating the third age in the ‘ageing’ of the birth cohort known as the baby boom generation, fails fully to capture the pervasiveness and irreversibility of the cultural change that has shaped not just one but a sequence of cohorts beginning with those born in the years just before World War II. Instead, we argue for a generational framework in understanding the third age, drawing upon Mannheim rather than Marx as the more promising guide in this area.

The Impact of Age, Place, Aging in Place, and Attachment to Place on the Well-Being of the Over 50s in England

This study uses data from the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing to explore the extent and significance of the influence of “age,” “place,” and “aging in place” on the attachment to place in a large representative population of English adults aged 50 and over. It then examines the contribution of age, place, aging in place, and the attachment to place to scores on the CASP 19, a measure of well-being designed to measure some of the key sentiments and experiences of the “third age.” The results indicate that age, aging in place, place, and the attachment to place interact in complex ways to affect levels of “third age” well-being.

The emotional consequences of falls for older people and their families

The emotional impact on elderly patients and their relatives of falls has not been widely studied. The authors of this study interviewed a consecutive series of 69 elderly patients admitted to hospital after a fall, together with their carers, to assess the significance of any fear of future falls and to examine other variables that might be associated with such fears. Whilst 25% of the patients expressed a significant fear of falling, 58% of the carers interviewed reported a great fear that their relative/friend might fall again. Fear of falling was primarily related to the emotional rather than the physical status of the patient. An attempt was made to contact all the patients and relatives one month after discharge and further interviews were conducted with those who were successfully followed up. Of the 46 patients re-interviewed, the proportion still reporting a fear of falling had dropped to 19% although the proportion of carers expressing such fears had risen to 66%. Finally there was no evidence that a fear of falling had influenced rehabilitation outcome.

Frailty, disability and old age: A re-appraisal

Frailty has become a topic of increasing interest in health care. No longer treated as a catch-all term for agedness, decline and disablement it has acquired a more precise definition, applied to those individuals whose ‘aged’ state is seen to put them at risk of adverse outcomes. This transformation is we argue the outcome of a more general differentiation of terms that were previously used to categorize the weak and marginal within society. Old age re-labelled as ‘later life’ has become re-articulated as a successful life stage relatively free from impairment. Disability has been re-positioned and its links with impairment attenuated while chronic illness has acquired a new narrative of its own. This has left frailty behind, redolent still with all the old negative attributes of marginality, but now more than ever evacuated of any remaining elements of ‘status’ or ‘agency’. Frailty is defined less by the identities of those who are deemed frail than by what frailty seems to augur in its direction of travel — a journey towards unspecified adverse outcomes. This re-positioning, we suggest, helps lay the foundation of a social imaginary of ‘the fourth age’ as the new location of old age.

Old people as users and consumers of healthcare: a third age rhetoric for a fourth age reality?

This paper is concerned with the emergence of consumerism as a dominant theme in the culture surrounding the organisation and provision of welfare in contemporary societies. In it we address the dilemmas produced by a consumerist discourse for older peoples healthcare, dilemmas which may be seen as the conflicting representations of third age and fourth age reality. We begin by reviewing the appearance of consumerism in the recent history of the British healthcare system, relating it to the various reforms of healthcare over the last two decades and the more general development of consumerism as a cultural phenomenon of the post World War II era. The emergence of consumer culture, we argue, is both a central theme in post-modernist discourse and a key element in the political economy of the New Right. After examining criticisms of post-modernist representational politics, the limitations of consumerism and the privileged position given to choice and agency within consumerist society, we consider the relevance of such critical perspectives in judging the significance of the user/consumer movement in the lives of retired people.

Internet use and the digital divide in the English longitudinal study of ageing

This paper examines the digital divide in Internet use in later life. We hypothesise that the differential diffusion of domestic information and communication technologies between pre- and post-Second World War cohorts is primarily responsible for this divide rather than either age-associated structural inequalities or age-related intrinsic features of mental and/or physical infirmity. Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing we show that age/cohort differences in Internet use persist after income, education, employment and health status are controlled for. However, when engagement with domestic information and communication technology and cultural activities are taken into account, age/cohort influences on Internet use decline. These contingent ‘age/cohort’ effects suggest that ‘generational’ rather than ‘structural’ or ‘stage of life’ influences may be more salient explanations of the (age-based) digital divide.

Consumption and Identity in Later Life: Toward a Cultural Gerontology

This paper considers the role of contemporary consumer culture in helping older people re-fashion their own identity in later life. As a result of the expanding role played by consumption in modern mass societies, adult identities now are being denned as much by how people spend their time and money as by the goods and services they can produce. An increasing number of retired people are able to participate in this consumer culture, and in doing so are creating new possibilities of being ‘old’. The contemporary period, whether deemed ‘late’ or ‘post’ modernity, seems to present a growing challenge to the dominance of structures of age, class and gender in defining the nature of our personal identity. There is more emphasis upon the exercise of choice and agency across all periods of the lifespan. The means by which this process is enacted in the lives of pre- and post-retired people should become central to a new, culturally focused social gerontology.

From passive to active consumers? Later life consumption in the UK from 1968-2005

The significance of the UKs ageing population has been generally acknowledged, however its implications for consumption have been neglected. The consumption patterns of older people are important given that the end of the 20th century witnessed profound changes to the nature of later life, many linked to the emergence of ‘consumer societies’ in the UK and elsewhere. The uneven nature of retirement, as well as the relative affluence of many retired people, has important effects on patterns and experiences of consumption. This paper charts consumption by retired households in two areas; ownership of key consumer goods and key components of household spending. We investigate how these expenditure trends compare with other household types and across pseudo-birth cohorts. We draw data from 9 years of the Family Expenditure Survey taken at 5 year intervals between 1968 and 2004/5. The data demonstrate the growing extent of ownership of key goods in retired households but also show the differences in proportional expenditure between retired households and the employed. We also note differences between pseudo-birth cohorts and conclude that consumption patterns in later life are influenced by the generational habitus of the differing cohorts who entered retirement between the 1960s and the present day.

Rethinking Old Age

This insightful re-examination of the nature of old age presents a unique theoretical account of the fourth age as the embodiment of the most feared and marginalized aspects of old age, addressing contemporary societys anxieties and ...