Ageing

Abstract

There has been much anxiety in economically developed parts of the globe, such as Britain, Northern Europe, and North America, about ageing societies (Arber & Attius-Donfut, 2000). Increasing longevity in Britain (the main focus of this chapter) has concentrated attention on ageing in media and academic debate (Higgs & Gilleard, 2010). This debate is preoccupied with the ‘demographic time-bomb’, which views age as a burden and ageing societies as problematic, given the welfare services that need to be sustained by tax revenues from decreasing numbers of those of working age. While this doom-laden story of intergenerational conflict has not gone unchallenged (Arber & Attius-Donfut, 2000), it overshadows consideration of ageing and later life as multidimensional experiences that are the combined results of socio-economic andcultural influences. The dominant cultural narrative of ageing across much of the ‘Western’ world is one of loss, decline, and isolation, where dementia represents a proxy for later life. But this account obscures affirmative and ambivalent experiences of ageing — an awareness gap I address below. In the context of Britain (a minority ‘Western’ culture), ageing as female, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, or intersex (LGBTQI) often involves economic, social, and cultural exclusion. But marginalised social positioning can encourage the development of political and narrative resources to help people negotiate with and contest ageing stereotypes and reclaim a measure of se If-worth.